In The Dark
by hobbitsdoitbetter
Summary: What if Lois wasn't really all that mad at Big Blue? What if it was really Clark that she was mad at? She just seemed more dismissive of him than you'd expect in the movie. Maybe there's a reason... LoisxClark with a difference, AU. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

-1**IN THE DARK**

_Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended and I do not profit from this story._

**Chapter one**

"To look at a thing is not the same as seeing a thing. And you never see any thing until you see its beauty." Oscar Wilde, _An Ideal Husband_

_I know what you're thinking. No, really I do. You're thinking, "Why are you being such a bitch to him? I mean, isn't it like kicking a puppy-dog, being mean to Clark Kent?" And you're totally right. You're absolutely, 100 correct. Being mean to Clark makes you feel like you've just told a bus-load of blind orphans that there's no Santa Clause. Makes you feel like you've talked Tinkerbell into getting herself a studio apartment in Shadyside and giving up on fairies._

_So why do I do it?_

_Well, I could tell you a fairytale about how I don't notice myself doing it, about how Mad Dog Lane and her nose for a story never even noticed Kansas State (all 6" 4' of him) unless she had to tell him off or move his ass. And most people would believe that. But it wouldn't be the truth. And all us reporters are supposed to care about is the truth. Doesn't matter if it breaks up your marriage. Doesn't matter if it nearly gets the guardian of Metropolis killed. The truth will set you free._

_Yeah, sure. Would you like fries with that?_

_No, the truth is that I did notice him. It's damn hard not to. 'Specially when he does stuff like remember your birthday, or buy you a candy bar because he knows you're havin' a lousy day and you'd never, EVER ask for one yourself. It's damn hard not to notice that he uses words like "golly," and "swell." _

_It's damn hard not to notice that he seems to break a little when he sees other people in pain. When he sees _**you**_ in pain._

_I was insulted when the Chief teamed us. Thought it was because I was a woman, and he wanted to cut me down to size. That assumption is one of the few things I feel truly ashamed of, even after all the stunts I've pulled, all the malarkey I've caused to people and property over the years. He has that knack, kinda like Superman in fact, for making you feel bad about the stuff you do. I've got so much guilt stored up over the pair of them I might just turn Catholic in my sleep. But after a little while I began to realise what the chief saw in him. He might not be the person you want saving you from a burning building, but Clark is the type of man you'd want waiting for you at home once the paramedics were done with you. He's just that type of guy. Super in a very different sense. And, ok, so maybe a bit flighty but there's nothing he wouldn't do for me. And yeah, I know I took advantage of it sometimes, but I tried to pay him back, watch out for him. _

_Maybe the problem isn't that I'm mad at him. Maybe the problem is that I'm mad at me. Figures._

_But I haven't answered your question. (Problem with being a reporter, you get used to asking questions and never having to answer them). And I wanna answer that one, since you asked it. It's time I answered that one. Why am I so mean to Clark Kent since he came back? Why am I being so goddamn dismissive?_

_Because when someone hurts you the way Clark hurt me, it's the only thing you can do. It's the only way you can stay sane. Pretend to be something you're not, to feel nothing when you feel everything, and hope the whole thing just blows over. Self-preservation can be a bitch. I'm just trying to keep up with her. _

_No, I can tell you're not buying that either._

_Fine, you wanna know? You really wanna know?_

_It started before he left, before he disappeared into the great blue yonder to "find himself." It started with a Saint Christopher medal, and a ribbon covered in strawberries. _

_It started with a girl._


	2. Chapter 2

-1**IN THE DARK**

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. I do not profit from this story

**Chapter 2**

"Coming through, coming through!" Lois elbowed her way to the front of the crowd, nearly throwing her cab-fare at the driver and all but dragging her partner behind her. She rolled her eyes as two of the male news reporters pouted that she'd creased their hair and pulled out her press badge, feeling the usual excitement building. Broadway wasn't normally this crowded on Friday afternoon, and a crowd this big meant something important. Maybe Lex Luthor important or, (well she _was_ thinking it), Superman important. There had to be at least ten reporters there already, but not one of them was her. Not one of them had the nose for a story that Mad Dog Lane had earned. She tried to push against the yellow police tape, get a peep at the crime scene, but immediately a uniformed police officer stopped her.

"Please Miss Lane," the middle-aged Hispanic woman said tiredly, "No walking on the crime scene until the city pathologist clears it."

"Can't you give me something?" Lois tried her most persuasive smile.

"Yeah, I can give you a sour grin. Now step away from the cordon." Right on cue Clark finally caught up with her, looking like he'd had a fight with a hedge and lost. Maybe the television crew took out their spleen on him, she mused.

"So what is it, Lois?" he asked eagerly. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes again.

"I can't tell, Officer Sarcasm won't let me-"

"Compromise an active crime scene? What a spoil sport." The new voice belonged to the young, exceptionally tall brunette who was making her way towards the path, pulling off her latex gloves as she went. Bethany "Sherlock," Holmes was the youngest ever coroner with the Metro Crime Lab; in the few months since her transfer from Salt Lake City to Metropolis she'd become a well known figure in the city, managing to solve crimes which seemed unsolvable. Some of the more tabloidy papers even linked her with Superman, but Lois knew that was a crock. The Man of Steel had asked for her help identifying a small fragment of evidence in the Mantiola kidnapping case and the media had had a feeding frenzy. Wasn't Holmes' fault.

Still, Lois had to admit to a niggling dislike of the other woman, a dislike compounded by her own annoyance at herself for being so juvenile. The young woman was smart, courteous, helpful when she could be. Everyone liked her, including Clark, at whom she was smiling rather more widely than Lois thought was normal. Or necessary. Or well, warranted. They both had a lot in common. So why was it that she found herself grinding her teeth when they met?

And why was the coroner still smiling, albeit wanly, at Clark? Because hello, lady, he's not your type! He's got a pulse.

"What can you tell us?" she asked crisply, pulling out her Dictaphone.

For once the young woman looked tired. "Not much, I'm afraid Miss Lane. Won't know anything until the autopsy. Which I'm not looking forward to," she muttered in an undertone. "This one wasn't covered, and she was left in a more populated area. That's all I can say." And again Sherlock sighed, her eyes suddenly troubled.

"Wait," Clark interrupted. "What do you mean, "this one"?"

Holmes' face flushed, having realised she'd just shot herself in the foot. "I thought you knew," she stammered. "This is the fourth one we've found in the last two months." She frowned at Lois. "Isn't that why you're here?"

"No, we just saw the crowd." Immediately Lois felt bad for being so uncharitable towards the coroner. If this was what she thought it was then Bethany Holmes had just had the unpleasant experience of bagging and tagging another teenaged girl's body on Broadway. Three (make that four) girls between the ages of 15 and 19 had disappeared from schools all over Metropolis in the last two months. Their bodies had been found, immaculately made up, their faces covered in bin liners, on the busiest stretch of real estate in Metropolis. There was no trace evidence, no DNA. Hell, it had taken Holmes three weeks to figure our how they'd died. The police were keeping the details quiet, trying to prevent a panic. Or more likely, Lois thought darkly, trying to cover the new police commissioner's ass while a maniac preyed on the most defenceless of victims.

No, she didn't envy Holmes one little bit right now.

"Look, Miss Lane, Mr. Kent," Miss Holmes whispered conspiratorially, "I've been asked to keep a lid on this, but I'm not sure it's for the best." Lois grinned despite herself: the other thing Sherlock was known for was a willingness to piss off those at the top if she thought she was right. "People should know to watch their daughters." She glanced at Officer Sarcasm who gave her a minute nod and pointedly walked away.

"You said he covered the others but not this one," Lois whispered. "Is that a sign of escalation?"

"It shows an erosion of remorse," Clark said quietly. Both women looked at him in surprise. "I watch a lot of crime shows," he explained nervously.

Sherlock shook her head. "There's no escalation. Except for a broken wrist pre-mortem there's no violence to the bodies. They're in pristine condition. He freezes them very slowly and then coats them in some form on transparent PVC, which I can only assume he paints on using a brush. It's like… it's like he wants to make them into china dolls." She squeezed the bridge of her nose, and Lois felt another stab of sympathy. Holmes was obviously feeling the effects of her discovery. The other woman looked decisively up at Lois and Clark. "Look, accidents happen on the street. When they remove the body, a certain reporter might _accidentally_ get a look at that body. Get a look at the physical type he goes for." She raised her eyes towards Lois and Clark to emphasise her meaning. They both nodded. She pulled out her walkie-talkie.

"Derricks, could you get the vic' in the van please? While I still have some of my will to live left." There was a burst of static and a skinny blond guy wearing an inappropriately loud Hawaiian shirt appeared from the alley to their left, pushing a covered gurney towards the Metro CSI van. As it went by Holmes subtly tipped off the sheet, revealing a freckled white arm and a long red plait tied with a strawberry-covered ribbon. A St. Christopher medal had been wound around the wrist with blue wool, the wrist itself discoloured as if it had been broken before death.

Wow, Lois thought, this one must be young.

Immediately Holmes pulled the blanket back over the body, shooting Lane a filthy look just for authenticity. "I said no, Miss Lane!" she snapped before zipping her kit-bag roughly closed and following Derricks into the van. She didn't meet their eyes as she left.

Lois watched them go, feeling slightly sick to her stomach. She hadn't seen much, but the latest victim had most definitely been a kid. She turned to Clark, about to toss around some ideas about how to attack the piece, when she noticed his ashen expression. He was staring into space like he'd seen a ghost.

"Clark, are you alright?" she asked quietly.

He looked up at her, blinking as if he's forgotten she was there. "Huh?"

"It gets everyone the first time they see a body," she said as soothingly as she could.

"I've seen dead bodies before Lois," he murmured, still staring after the van. He couldn't take his eyes off it. "She was very young," he said quietly.

Lois merely nodded, her mind still on the story and how to write it without giving Holmes away or doing too much to upset the grieving families of the victims.

Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that something had changed, something indefinable. There was something in Clark's expression that she'd never seen before, and it made her uncomfortable. In the days to come, she would often replay this moment in her mind, and wonder what exactly he'd seen when he'd looked at that gurney.

No, not what, she would amend: who.

So, should I continue? Please let me know what you think…


	3. Chapter 3

_Disclaimer_: Me no profit, you no sue, we all happy as bunnywabbits...

Unbetaed so mistakes are mine. Thaaaaaankyou to all the people who reviewed because getting reviews is better than crack... (and those who just read, you're not chopped liver either!). This chapter is longer and darker, a bit more angsty, because we all know that this story doesn't have a happy ever after ending... Also there's a little bit of swearing, not much by my standards but just to warn you. Oh and credit where it's due, the idea for this story came from my incomparable best friend and kickass writer Jen. Go raibh mile maith agat, a chara

CHAPTER 3

_And that's when it started. Course, I didn't realise anything had started then, except a hunt for a predator. But things had changed. I'd never seen Clark so, well rattled. Like he'd just met the ghost of Christmas past. Clark never really talked about his past much; I didn't notice that trait of his until it was too late. He always seemed content to draw other people out, it was what made him a good reporter. It never used to bother me: I mean, how much excitement could he have had, growing up in Nowheresville, Kansas? And Mad Dog Lane always had something else to think about, something else to focus on. _

_You can see a man every day, make him into your best friend, and still know nothing about him._

_Of course, my attention was mainly focussed on Superman around this time. Everyone's attention was focussed on Superman. I mean, it seems hard to imagine now, but there'd never been anything like him before. A God who came from the sky and only did good, how amazing is that? And he seemed to like me. I'm not full of myself, but even a woman as focussed as me had to notice that I got special attention. Special treatment. It was like a high school crush, all lingering glances and finding excuses to talk to each other. On both sides. I never made the cheerleading squad: maybe this was the universe's way of paying me back. And always in the background there was Clark, spending more time with me than any human being had managed since my dad left. I didn't think about it, didn't wonder about what the relationship was turning into, so focussed on one thing that I didn't even notice my heart's sleight of hand until it was too late. I was interested in Superman, not Clark Kent. Because being interested in Clark Kent would have just been too damn prosaic. And too damn possible._

_Was I scared of him? Hell yes. It's easier to want a faraway image than deal with flesh and blood. _

_But even someone as solipsistic as me could spot the changes in Clark. He pushed on this case, harder than me. First time he got pushy about it he damn near gave Perry a heart-attack with shock. The mild-mannered reporter worked like a demon, spent his nights at the Planet, chased leads. Hell, he even intimidated a few of __your more seasoned government officials, and they dealt with **me**. I was proud of my boy. The first three days after we met with Holmes I don't think he slept; he fell asleep on day four at his desk. When I woke him at 6.45 with a coffee he looked terrified. It was funny, the glasses all lopsided on his face; made me laugh when I didn't think I had an ounce of laughter left in me. I got the impression Clark didn't think it was funny though. I supposed it was a Mid Western thing, not wanting me to see him that tired and vulnerable. But I was proud of him. So very proud that he's had a fire lit under him. "I can do this, Lois," he'd mutter intensely in the wee small hours of the morning when we talked shop. "I can help with this. Me, Clark Kent. Not Superman. Finally there'll be a reason I'M here_." _When he said that, for the first time I felt guilty about how much time I spent talking about Superman. Did Clark really feel that that was who he had to match up to? I tried to talk to him about it, but the words dried up in my throat. So I just gave his elbow a little squeeze and brought him some coffee._

_Like I said, I don't do so well with flesh and blood._

"Chorus girl Rochelle DeMitte received a nasty shock this morning as she took a fresh-air break," the handsome 40-something TV reporter said evenly into his mike. "The body of the Ice Sculptor's fifth victim was found by Miss DeMitte while stretching her legs after a long night's performance. The discovery of this newest victim, 16 year old Michelle Mahoney, has been a serious blow to the hopes of Metro Detectives trying to put an end to this ever-escalating nightmare." A high school year book photo of Mahoney, wearing huge coke-bottle lenses and even larger braces, appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. "Mahoney, newly moved here from Gotham, had been missing for a week since her disappearance from a dance recital on Thursday night…"

Clark switched the channel.

"Hey, I was watching that!" Gil Truman protested.

"Deal with it," Lois said sweetly, knocking Truman's baseball cap off his head. She was thankful he'd turned it off; she couldn't miss the hurt that had flashed across Clark's face at the news. Mahoney had been a great white hope for those trying to break the case: a tough kid from Gotham's Narrows who'd won a scholarship to Metropolis' prestigious School of Dance, the teenager had been smart and used to taking care of herself. She'd nearly managed to fight off her attacker, and it was thanks to the attention she'd drawn that they now knew The Ice Sculptor drove a blue BMW. Her abduction had been witnessed, and despite the fact that she hadn't fought him off police officers were hopeful that the young woman would escape. Finding her body would have been a heavy blow.

Lois wasn't sure how to deal with Clark on this. She knew that it had doubtless upset him, and knocked that ever-dwindling font of hope he seemed to carry around inside him. She felt bad for him; she knew the frustration of not being able to break a case. He was taking this awfully hard, and personal, something she also knew a fair bit about. But at the same time, the guy'd been freaked by the fact that she saw him asleep at his desk; would bringing this up not be a huge breach of that Kansas stoicism of his?

_Should you wait until he has a break-down and THEN try to talk to him, Lane? _she asked herself.

Good point.

Squaring her shoulders she walked steadily over to his desk and perched herself on the edge. He appeared to have his nose in a police report, but Lois could tell he wasn't reading it. His eyes were simply staring at one spot. Was he hearing Mahoney's voice, imagining what her last moments had been like?

She'd done that too.

"Hey Clark," she began heartily, and immediately winced. She'd been going for casual and it had come out forced. He looked up at her, his eyes wan and tired behind his glasses. He knew what she was up to, she could tell. "How long is it since you slept?" she asked bluntly. She was aware that advice on that area coming from her was a bit hypocritical, but she'd take hypocrisy over worry any day of the week. "We've both spent the last three nights here, and frankly I usually expect dinner and a movie before I sleep with my partner." Again she winced. The attempt at humour had fallen flat, and she was sure she'd made things even worse. Which was why his depressed little chuckle surprised her.

"Lois, I can go on very little sleep when I need to. There are a lot of things I can do when I need to," he added in an undertone. "This monster is not going to wait for me to sleep, isn't going to wait for anyone to rest. He's going to keep doing this until we catch him, it's that simple." He leaned back, surveying her through those glasses, and she felt suddenly self-conscious. Perhaps realising this he immediately slumped again, looking away. Lois felt a flash of irritation: when would he learn that she liked it when he didn't play that game? Lois would take the fighting, snapping Clark of the last few days over the pushover Clark who had preceded him any day of the week. "I'll sleep when we catch this guy," he muttered into his tie.

"Which would be a lot goddamn sooner if you took a break for a few hours and got some rest!" she snapped, nettled by his change in attitude and her own worry. "You can do things, great things, as a reporter, but only if you give your best. And right now," she leaned into his face for emphasis "you couldn't help a fruit fly, Farm Boy!"

He looked up, stared at her straight in the face and for one moment Lois felt sure that he was going to answer her back, to start an argument right here in front of everybody. She wanted him to, dared him to, knowing that if nothing else it would help him vent his stress. You had to be a fighter in this job or you burned out. This close she could see how pale he looked, how beaten down, and it infuriated her because she couldn't do anything about it.

Still he stared, straight into her eyes, not backing down.

She'd never noticed how clear his eyes were, how focussed, how… blue. Not a fleck of another colour, just a uniform blue, it was like staring into a diamond. The entire office had stopped to stare at them, conversations had died, everyone wondering if this was the moment when Lois and Clark finally took off the gloves and threw down.

For the first time in an age the clock above the elevators could be heard ticking.

"Lois," he said quietly, "Sit down."

"No!" She banged her fists on his desk, making the room at large jump. "Not until you get some rest! You've been running on nothing but caffeine and righteous indignation for days now, you need to take a break!"

"I'm a grown man, Lois!" he snapped back, drawing a gasp of shock from the onlookers. "I don't need to be told when my bed time is!"

"Then act like a grown man and get some rest!" She leaned over him, closer than she'd been before, trying belatedly to keep her voice down. "These investigations will eat you alive Kent if you don't learn to pace yourself. You don't sleep, you get sloppy, you miss something. And then you spend the rest of your life feeling guilty because you missed the one thing that might have saved someone." She was trying to make him see the big picture, how this wasn't just about one person's crusade. But she couldn't scream at him that she needed him to get some rest because watching him slowly kill himself was killing her.

"You know nothing about guilt!" he hissed.

She blinked, unable to stop the hurt expression which crossed her face. Only Clark, and maybe Perry, could've drawn that look from her, and it looked like Kent knew it. He sat back, shocked, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish's. Without another word he grabbed his coat and headed for the door, leaving a stunned office in his wake.

He didn't even looked back as he left.

Lois flopped back in her chair and buried her face in her hands. "That went well," she muttered to herself. How the hell did that just happen? Why the hell couldn't she stop herself?

Why did it feel so terrible that Clark Kent, hick extraordinaire, was mad at her?

"He'll be back," Perry assured her softly, laying a fax which had come through for her at her elbow. "He's made of tougher stuff than that, Lane: he survives you." Lois nodded numbly, taking a deep breath, unconsciously squeezing the hand Perry had laid on her shoulder.

Oh, he'll survive me alright, a little voice in her head whispered. The question is, will I survive him?

_So we had a fight, big surprise, right? Well, actually it is. Because for the first time I got the feeling that Clark was a match for me. A real match. That he could give just as good as he got, if only he would let himself go. For the first time since I'd met him I realised that he wasn't a pushover, that he could fight. That he could be as unrelenting as I could. And I finally realised why I put up with him, even when he did the geek routine which drove me crazy: I cared about him. Now I know that sounds stupid; I mean it should've been obvious before that, it was to everyone else. But not to me. You gotta understand, I keep people at a distance most of the time. I learned a long time ago that it's the only way to survive contact with the human race. You can let them be your colleagues, let them be your peers, but for Chrissake don't let them close enough to see just how much of a screw-up you are. Cos then they leave. Like my dad did, like Lucy did. Like even Superman did in the end. I was so terrified of being abandoned, it took really being abandoned to get me over it. And if I'd had the… emotional competence back then to understand that, then I might not be with Richard right now. I might not have spent the last five years angry and bitter. Don't get me wrong, it worked out for the best I suppose, but if I hadn't had my head in my ass five years ago then my life might have turned out very different._

_Like I said, maybe I'm not angry at him: maybe I'm angry at m_e.

It was three in the morning when Lois heard banging on her front door. To be more precise she heard muttering and the sound of shuffling feet, and then banging. She forced herself lightly out of bed, picking up her baseball bat from its place behind the door and raising it in readiness as she undid the latch.

"Clark?"

Well, he hadn't gone home to get some sleep she mused. Though how much longer he'd stay conscious was anyone's guess. For a big guy he looked like little Abigail Ross over in Accounting could've taken him down at the moment. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, and the slouch to his shoulders was worse than ever. He stared at her blearily through his fringe, and despite her anger she felt herself soften.

"Lois, can I come in?" he asked in agitation. He couldn't seem to decide what to do with his hands, moving them constantly: if Lois hadn't known better she would have sworn he was stoned. Not trusting herself to speak quite yet she stepped aside and opened the door wider to let him in.

She noted that he looked around to see if anyone had noticed his entrance.

"This isn't a den of iniquity Clark!" she snapped. "Nobody will think you're up to no good!"

She shot her a sheepish look. "Sorry."

"Don't apologise," she snapped irritably.

"Then I should go," he muttered, turning to leave.

"Clark!" Suddenly the ridiculousness of everything struck her, and she felt her face splitting in a lopsided smile. "Here," she gestured with the baseball bat to her couch, and he cocked an eye-brow at her. "Don't worry, I won't use it. Your head's probably too thick to make a dent in."

He sat down gingerly on the couch and she did the same, taking her place as far from him as she could. She got the feeling that he was skittish, and that too much close contact might cause him to bolt.

"Lois-"

"Clark-"

"You first," Lois said.

He sighed, something he seemed to do more and more these days, and nodded. He took a moment to compose himself, steepling his fingers in front of his chest. She waited. "I'm sorry about earlier," he began. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry I behaved like a jackass." A small smile lit his features, which she returned. Another pause, seemingly because he didn't know how to go on. "Can I show you something?" he asked suddenly.

She blinked, surprised. "Sure."

He pulled out his wallet and slowly opened it. For a moment he stared lovingly at the picture of his parents, then he turned the photograph pouch over to the other side and handed it to her.

A teenaged girl, about 16 years old, stared back at Lois. Her face was covered in freckles, just like the girl Holmes had shown them on Broadway, and she wore her hair in two long, bright red plaits. She was sticking her tongue out at an obviously younger Clark, who was grinning back at her. He only looked about 16 himself. Without asking permission (it didn't even occur to her) Lois pulled the photo out and checked the back. "For Clark, who should remember to breath! Lana 8/23." She looked up at him. "Who's Lana?"

He leaned back in the couch, drawing his hand across his eyes, and for a long moment he didn't answer her. "Lana is… Lana _was_ the girl next door."

Lois looked back at the photo, nonplussed, and suddenly the pieces fit together. The freckles, the red hair, the age of the Ice Sculptor's victims. He _had_ seen the ghost of Christmas past. _All those girls growing old now_, she thought to herself, _all that long hair in the grave_. No wonder he took it so personally. "What happened to her?" she asked quietly.

"I didn't mean to hurt her," he whispered. "She always seemed so strong, so… fearless. It never occurred to me she could be so fragile."

Lois could feel her alarm rising. "Clark, what happened?"

"She was trying to teach me to dance." His eyes were looking into the past now, not seeing her. "Lana was never frightened of anything, she never saw the risks. She never thought I could hurt her." His shoulders slumped, and it suddenly occurred to Lois that she might be the only person he had ever discussed this with. "I was so young then, I didn't know my own strength. I broke her wrist when I was trying to lead." Lois gave a little gasp. "She didn't even get mad at me, can you believe that? She said she knew it wasn't my fault. But that didn't make her any less hurt. Didn't make me any less culpable."

"Clark, you were a kid!" Lois stared at him, astonished. Was this what he was afraid of? Why he kept everyone at a distance? Was it fear that he'd hurt someone else? "You didn't do it on purpose, you said so yourself." But he wasn't listening to her.

"Superman didn't so it, Luthor didn't so it, _I did_. It's _my_ job to fix it." He stared at Lois, a little wild, a little lost. "That's the only way to justify my being here, don't you see that? If I can only hurt people then what use am I?"

Lois leaned forward, impulsively grabbing his hand and squeezing it. She hated seeing him like this, hated knowing he was doing this to himself. "You made a mistake, it happens!" she said tightly. "It was only her wrist-"

"This time!" he was practically shaking with agitation.

"No, not this time!" She knelt down in front of him, taking him by the shoulders. "You listen to me, Clark Kent. You make mistakes. We all do. But there is a helluva difference between accidentally breaking someone's wrist and playing The Ice-Man Cometh with a bunch of dead school girls!" He looked up at her suddenly. "There are plenty of reasons why you deserve to be here just as much as Superman, or Batman, or Nelson Mandela, or Mother Teresa, or anyone. You're a good man, Clark, and the world is a better place because of you!"

Still he stared at her.

"I'm a better person because I've met you," she said quietly. "And much as I like the new and improved, Annoy-o-Matic Clark, I will not allow you to think badly of yourself, or blame yourself for this."

She sat down on the couch next to him, some of the fight gone out of her. Without really thinking about it she leant slightly against him, laying her head on his shoulder. He stiffened and she resolutely took his arm and draped it over her. _In for a penny, in for a pound._ He looked down at her. "Don't give me any lip, Kansas," she said warningly. The ghost of a smile played across his face. She could hear his heart beating, a slow thump in his chest. It was soothing. _He_ was strangely soothing. She could feel his tenseness beginning to wind away, and she smiled to herself. How had she never noticed how wired he was? How had she never noticed that he never seemed to just relax? And now she knew why. All that guilt, all that fear that he'd hurt someone.

That he'd hurt her?

"Clark," she said softly, afraid to break this moment, which seemed so fragile. Something told her it would never come again.

"Hmm, Lois?" he sounded tired, and frazzled, and… and...

"Clark," she took a deep breath and pushed herself upright to face him. "Just so you know, I'm going to hurt you. And you're going to hurt me. Because that's what people do, when they care about each other." He looked shocked and she repressed the urge to laugh. "It's what happens when you become involved with someone, you hurt them. But you help them, and you make them happy too. And, and-" Why had she even begun to say this? "And you make me happy sometimes, and I just wanted to warn you."

_Very articulate, Lane._

He stared at her for a few more moments, and she could read some kind of interior battle going on behind his eyes. And then suddenly-

Suddenly he smiled, a huge smile, as if he'd only just figured out something wonderful. "Okay, Lois," he said simply. "Okay."

_Did I just tell Clark Kent I care about him? _she wondered. _Did I just **figure out **I care about him? _Lois forced her voice to remain steady, to veer as far away from panic as she could. She'd told him, she'd said-

She'd told him the truth, she realised. And the truth can set you free.

"You should probably kiss me, Kent," she said softly, willing her voice light and playful, painfully aware that she might scare him off, "before I get some sense and change my mind."

He stared down at her, nonplussed. Maybe he was wondering about her and Superman. Maybe he was horrified. He made a move towards his glasses, as if to take them off and she stopped him. If he was thinking about Superman, about measuring up, then perhaps she should reassure him. The glasses were a part of who he was; and this was about him and her. Suddenly it seemed very important that he not change, that he not try to be different. "You'll need those," she whispered, smiling. Something passed across his face, a flash of emotion too swift to register. God, Lois hoped it was relief. "They're part of you."

"Are you sure about this?" His voice was very low and earnest, like he was taking some kind of vow. Man like Clark, he probably was.

"I'm sure." She took a deep breath. "Are you?"

The long pause before he answered made her hold her breath. He searched her face, almost anguished. The gap between what he wanted and what was right perhaps bothered him: he was an old-fashioned guy.

But when he kissed her, the gap seemed to disappear for him. For the first time since she'd met him Lois felt Clark let go.

And she smiled in the dark, that she had been the cause of it.

_Warms the cockles of your heart, doesn't it? The ice bitch and the nerd made some headway, made their peace, and love conquers all. But come on, boys and girls. You know this isn't how the story ends. Life is never that kind. If this was all that happened do you think I'd be treating him the way I do? He acts like he doesn't even remember this, and every time he does, I remember what I told him. "I'm going to hurt you and you're going to hurt me." Thought he'd take it as a warning, not a challenge. But then Clark is a mass of contradictions. I'm just not willing to figure him out anymore._

Okay, hope you liked it, please review and let me know. The next chapter should be the tough one...


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not profit from this fan fiction and no infringement of copyright is intended.

Thank you so much for all the amazing reviews. This is a story that's really close to my heart and I'm amazed that so many people have taken the time to get in touch with me about it. This chapter is short, and very angst-filled, but I thought I should post it and let you all make up your own mind. Thanks again and hope you enjoy it.

**Chapter 4**

She was cold.

Lois was fairly certain that she'd been cold for a while, because even the sheets around her were chilled, no warm body to heat them. Every limb, every muscle felt sore and heavy, but then she hadn't slept in so long that was to be expected.

And besides, she hadn't exactly gotten a lot of sleep last night, now had she?

She stretched out, feeling beside her. Something was missing and it took a moment to register what. There was no similarly warm, similarly tired, similarly happy person beside her, there was only cold air and freezing sheets.

She forced her eyes open. He was sitting in a chair in the corner of her bedroom, staring at her. The expression on his face told her that he wasn't pleased she'd woken up.

Her heart gave a jolt. Something was very, very wrong.

She self-consciously pulled the sheets tighter around her chest, fighting a wave of panic. "Morning," she said, relieved her voice came out steady.

He merely nodded. Maybe he couldn't trust his voice to be steady, she thought to herself.

_Lois Lane, that's a crock and you know it. _

"You're dressed." And he was. The full, three piece suit it had taken so much laughing and tugging to get him out of last night. He was even wearing his shoes. Planning on doing some walking, Clark? Yeah, right out the door.

The silence stretched out.

_I will NOT make this easy for him._

"Lois, last night was…" His voice trailed off, and she bit the sudden urge to cry. You don't cry Lane, she told herself sternly. You make other people do that. "Last night was a mistake." He took a deep breath, seemingly forcing himself to say this. "I took terrible advantage of a situation, and let things get out of hand-"

_Let things? LET THINGS? Do you think I'm some kind of adolescent? _She wanted to scream.

"You have been such a wonderful friend to me Lois, and you deserved better."

_I thought I got better. I thought I had you, and you were better_. She heart lurched as the night played over in her mind. Nervousness, joy, pleasure. Relief that finally she had made a smart decision, that she had wanted someone healthy who wanted her. Two people in the dark. "Tell me with your hands Clark, what's in your heart," she'd told him. She thought he had.

And now he was dressed and ready for inspection, ready to troop right out the door like nothing at all had happened, like nothing at all had changed.

She could see the fear in him, damn near smell it: he was terrified, close to panic. The walls were going up again, because he truly couldn't imagine a life without them. He couldn't imagine how he'd get through the day out of control and happy, and so he was turning tail and running. She could practically hear the cogs of his mind working, telling him to run for cover. She wasn't enough to undo thirty odd years of emotional training, how could she be?

_He was enough to undo thirty odd years of emotional training on you._

She could fight, she could push. He wanted this, she knew he did, and she could fight for him. She could force him, make him, persuade him. She didn't want to be alone in the dark anymore. She didn't want _him_ to be alone in the dark anymore. There was nothing she couldn't do when she put her mind to it. She told herself that was the truth. And the truth can set you free.

_You're not enough to undo this, Lois. You know you're not enough._

Her heart froze at the thought. Somewhere inside her, the fears and insecurities raised their head and began to regain ground. She had an out: _she wasn't enough. _She wanted him, but it wasn't going to happen, it was just one of those things. And the ache in her chest? That wasn't what it feels like to have a broken heart, she thought to herself. The ache of it, the pain. The feeling that everything she was would bleed out if she didn't pull the walls back up. No, she was being _realistic._

They were both right, the walls were necessary. Thirty odd years of emotional stupidity couldn't be wrong.

She stared at him, summoning every ounce of self control she had. "You slept, didn't you?" she asked coldly. Funny how much self-control sounded like fear.

His eyes widened. "Lois, I-"

"This isn't Kansas, my father doesn't carry a shotgun." She got out of bed, forcing herself to dress in as business-like a manner as possible, as if nothing emotional had happened at all. _Convince him, convince him_, her mind chanted. "Things happen Clark; like you said you're a grown man." It was only with great difficulty that she stopped herself making a nasty crack about size and immaturity. "I'm gonna head out to get some breakfast, let yourself out would you?"

She picked up her keys calmly. She closed the door, not banging it. She bought a paper and a packet of cigarettes on the way to Rosalie's Coffee Shop three blocks away. And all the way there she whispered it, over and over in her head:

_He's not the coward, Lane: you are…_

A/N The next part allows Big Blue to wade into matters. Hope you liked this one and weren't disappointed.


	5. Chapter 5

_Disclaimer_: No infringement of copyright is intended, and this fan fiction is not written for profit. Sorry about the delay in posting, this one takes longer to edit and write than the others. Cheers.

IN THE DARK

_Chapter Five_

Lois remembered the first time she'd ever stood on the roof of the Daily Planet. She'd been 22, a young intern, and she'd been looking for a place to sneak a smoke. Joe Briscoe, the senior columnist she'd trained under, had directed her up to the roof with a knowing wink and a grin. She would never forget the first time she saw that view: Metropolis spread before her like a map of the universe, strangely silent and ethereal from this high up. Most of the important moments in her life were associated with this spot: it was here Perry had told her she'd earned her first bi-line. It was here that she'd first met an eager kid named Jimmy who assured her the Chief needed her ASAP.

It was here that she'd first talked to Superman, one on one. Well, without being airborne.

Lois sighed and dragged her hair tiredly off her face. She hadn't gone down to the newsroom so far today. She'd felt paranoid that everyone would notice she was wearing the same clothes as the day before, and start smirking at her and Clark. She couldn't take that right now. She couldn't take anything right now. The criminals and politicians she spent her days intimidating would've laughed their asses off to see Mad Dog Lane staring into space like a statue, her famous focus completely shot by a hick from Nowheresville, Kansas. She couldn't seem to settle on anything; she didn't want to be in work and yet she couldn't bear the thought of sitting at home. Every action, every plan of attack she came up with for the day seemed impossible and tiring. She told herself she just needed some air, and maybe a cigarette before she planned her next move, but she couldn't even bring herself to believe it.

_Can this day possibly get any worse_?

"You really do like trifling with death, don't you Lois?" a familiar voice said from above her. She looked up to see Superman smiling wryly down at her. Despite herself her spirits lifted. The only uncomplicated, straight-forward person in her life (besides the Chief) had come to rescue her from her black mood.

"Danger is my middle name," she said dryly, trying not to notice how forced it sounded.

"I thought that it was Anne." He alighted on the roof beside her. Lois mockingly held out the cigarette, and he wrinkled his nose in disgust, leaning back and mirroring her body language. That must be why he seems so tense, she thought: he's getting the vibe off me.

"So, how go things in the fight for truth and justice and all that jazz?" She fixed him with her most pointed stare, enjoying the way it made him uncomfortable. Superman didn't fidget, but he came damn close to it when she shot him her specialised look. She almost smiled, pleased she could control something in her life, even if it was only his reaction. He looked strangely lost for words, and immediately she felt contrite. Normally she would've smiled at him, but she didn't. It would have felt like she was cheating on Clark, and that thought was downright absurd.

_Cheating?_ _Cheating! You just got the lamest "dear Lois," speech in human history and you're worried about cheating on Clark? It'd serve him right if you did do something… _She forced her mind away from that particular train of thought, already too emotional and confused to add Superman to the mix.

He sighed. "Not so well actually. I'm still trying to find this monster, before he takes someone else's daughter."

"You haven't found anything on the Ice Sculptor?"

He shook his head. "It's enough to make me believe in ghosts. Bethany says he leaves no trace evidence whatsoever." Lois fought down a flicker of jealousy at the mention of the pathologist, but he noticed it anyway. "You've been doing most of the work on that case, haven't you?" he asked, trying to change the subject, gallant as ever.

"Well, actually-" She paused. _Come on Lane, at least give him some professional courtesy_. "Actually, it's Clark who's been pushing on this one."

"Clark?" he asked carefully.

"Yeah, Clark." An uncomfortable silence descended, and Lois fought the urge to tap her toe, or bite her nails, or do anything other than listen to the Guardian of Metropolis be uncomfortable. Of course, he was a friend of Clark's, and she could see how this situation might be…

Hold on, back up a second there. Why on Earth would **he** be uncomfortable?

The thought coiled like a snake in her head: _Had Clark told him?_

Lois felt her breath hitch in her throat and she tried to stay calm. As she saw it, there were two possibilities. One, he was reading the stress coming off her, maybe listening to the way her heart-beat quickened and her pulse jumped at the mention of her partner's name, and he could tell that something was up between the two of them. But believing that scenario would have meant believing that Superman was listening far more closely to her than she felt comfortable with. She liked the idea that this bond of theirs allowed him to simply tell when she was in danger; her life had depended on it more than once. What she didn't like was the idea (which she had always so carefully shied away from) that he could enter her personal space like that, that he could tell so much more about her than she was willing to let him know.

Funny how Clark's apparent ability to do the same thing just from good old human observation rarely fazed her.

But there was another possibility, which seemed to Lois' current hurt and angry state to be far more appealing: that Clark had told him. Told him what happened, how she'd made such a fool of herself the night before. He was certainly peering anxiously at her like he expected something, some sort of reaction. Of course, before this all started she would have staked her reputation on Clark Kent's gentlemanly conduct. But after this morning… she could feel the rage beginning to boil inside her, ready to erupt not at the person who had caused it, but at the being beside her who (unfortunately) reminded her more and more of Clark with every passing second. Maybe Kent had told his friend, maybe to prove what a pain in the ass she was, maybe to put off the competition, and now Superman was feeling tongue-tied and uncomfortable around her, probably planning on turning tail and running too.

_Paranoid much, Lane? _She might have asked herself at another time. But she was feeling too tired, and hurt, and angry to remind herself that this wasn't some plot from a dime novel, with heroes and villains wearing black and white. And there was something downright intoxicating about the idea that Clark had been so mean and insensitive, since it would have let her nicely off the hook about her earlier cowardice.

She fixed Superman with a stare which could only be described as venomous.

"Is there something you want to say to me, Superman?" she asked slowly, deliberately. She wasn't fidgeting now; all her feelings of powerlessness, of being lost, had hardened and coalesced to a razor sharp point, a point which had now found a target.

For the first time ever, Lois succeeded in intimidating Superman.

"No, no Lois, I- I just wondered where Clark was. How he was doing."

The silence was smothering, poisonous. Lois felt like she was drowning, and the only lifeline back to shore was her anger. She had to take back control of her life, and this felt insanely like the first step to doing that.

"I don't know where Clark is. I haven't seen him." He looked up suddenly again, catching her in a lie and then belatedly realising that she'd caught him catching her. His face went pale.

"He told you." Not so much a sentence as a declaration of war.

Superman began to stammer, and the resemblance to Clark (in Lois' mind) became even more pronounced. "T-Told me what Lois?"

"You know damn well what!" And she did yell this time, the pain and frustration which had been building within her since she'd walked out of her apartment finally breaking free. "Did he tell you what I did? How I bought that pathetic little puppy dog routine of his? Finally let him crawl inside my bed, inside my sheets?" She was spitting her words, letting them tumble over one another, unstoppable as a juggernaut. This was a recipe for disaster, and some crazy part of her didn't care, wanted to smash everything around her to pieces and start again rather than face the thought of trying to repair things. Of trying to repair her and Clark. Superman was staring at her, horrified. "What, you don't think I should talk about it? Don't think it's fit for polite company that your friend, your mild-mannered, apple-pie friend screwed me last night and I let him?"

"It wasn't like that-" he tried to interject.

"How the hell would you know? He give you the low-down? A play-by-play account?" The anger was ebbing now, and tears were (mortifyingly) taking its place. "He tell you what I said to him, what I whispered in the dark? Did he? _DID HE_?"

_The walls had tumbled down last night, and she thought a new city would take their place. Now she had only ruins._

"Did he tell you that I chose him?" she hissed, leaning in close, making every word as malicious as she could. "I chose him over you. I chose flesh and blood over a god." She was goading him, delighted with the heady feeling of being out of control, of being high on her own anger.

"I'm not a god Lois," he whispered, horrified, heart-wrung.

She laughed bitterly. "_You're_ not even a man."

Her heart stopped beating, frozen, the cold coming as suddenly as the realisation that she could never take that back. Lois instinctively realised that she had hit a sore spot, the Achilles heel in his perfect, chinkless emotional armour. She, the one person he had ever seemed willing to reach out to and make a connection with, had thrown jos feelings back in his face: he wasn't human. For a split second he looked so lost and alone that she thought for the second time that day that her heart might break. But she steeled herself, telling herself it was his fault, and Clark's fault, that she had just ripped her friend's heart out.

She'd said nothing but the truth, she thought defensively, and the truth can set you free.

Without another word he rose up into the air, heading towards the sun straight and graceful as an arrow. "Goodbye Superman," she called, still sounding giddy. Only when he was out of sight did she let herself process what she had done, let herself think that she might just have said goodbye to him for the last time.

_Oh God._

The door behind her banged open and Jimmy rushed out, breathless and pale.

"Lois-Chief-looking for you-" he young man wheezed.

"What's up Jimmy?" she muttered, keeping her back to him, pretending she wasn't suddenly (for the third time that day) wrestling back tears.

"It's all over the TV," Olsen answered, still bent over with the stitch in his side. She wondered idly why he'd taken the stairs.

"What's all over the TV, Jimmy?" she asked quietly, trying to keep her voice even.

The young photographer looked sraight at her. "Bethany Holmes has just been reported missing."

_It's not like I planned things this way: I had a whole scenario worked out about my personal life. I was making goo-goo eyes at a God, for Chrissakes. I had a happy, complicated little soap opera going on: I didn't need human drama when I had so much of the extra-terrestrial kind on tap. But then since when does life go the way you want it too? I'm not an innocent abroad: it's not like I'm the first person to ruin a perfectly good friendship with a close encounter of the naked kind. I should've just chalked it up to experience and moved on. I should've just let it go. And if I hadn't just realised that I was nuts about the guy then I might have._

_From here it all seems so simple, so obvious. 20/20 hindsight's a bitch._

_My mother used to say that the only thing a woman will never forgive you for is knowing more than she does. I thought I'd finally figured out the deal with Clark; I thought we'd told each other our secrets. When I heard his little speech from that chair I suddenly realised that I'd been wrong, that I'd missed something. My pride smarted about that, about the fact that I couldn't hide that he'd played me. And I told myself I'd been played, because thinking about how we both could've gotten our wires crossed would have meant thinking about things from his side, and trying to work things out. And the great big honkin' pile of fear in my chest wouldn't let me do that. No, I would rather push Clark away and torture Superman. Even if it would have made me happy, even if it would have meant the beginning of something complicated and healthy and human. I chased after pie in the sky (cape and all, as it turned out) in the end and the kicker is, I know I did. I **always** know what I'm doing._

_Mom was wrong: the one thing a woman won't forgive you for, is her knowing she's making a mistake. Because there's nobody else to blame when it all comes down to it. I told myself I wouldn't make it easy for him, but I had. I shut my mouth, happy as a pig in mud in my little swamp of self-righteous anger. _

_I know, believe me, that I outdid myself in the screw-up stakes. For never forget, I am Lois Lane, ace reporter: there is no situation on earth that I can't make worse. I just have to apply myself._

A/N Was it alright? This one was a bitch to get through. Push the little button and let me know what you think. Less emotional angst next chapter and more violence and larceny, I promise…


	6. Chapter 6

_Disclaimer_: This fanfiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended.

Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed. Hope you like this one; the plot thickens, as they say...

_Chapter Six_

The newsroom was eerily silent as she followed Jimmy inside. All the reporters were glued to MNN, where Skyler Johanssen, the network's newest anchorwoman, was describing the mood in the Metro Crime Lab. "Metropolis' criminologist community was shocked today by this unforeseen turn of events," the pretty blond reporter intoned darkly. "Top Metro pathologist Bethany Holmes is a mainstay of the law-enforcement team, and her colleagues are obviously deeply shaken by her disappearance. Miss Holmes, pictured here during the Mantiola court case-" the footage switched to Metropolis' central criminal court, where a wind-blown Holmes was giving an interview about her contribution to the prosecution's case- "had been working on the current high profile "Ice Sculptor," investigation, and while the MPD is quick to deny a link between that case and her disappearance, other sources within her lab have indicated that she was close to a break-through before her kidnapping."

Many of the reporters rolled their eyes at the insinuation in Johannsen's tone. Outside of Hollywood movies serial killers rarely if ever made an attempt on the life of the investigation team. And even of the Ice Sculptor was that cocky, taking down Holmes would not have been easy: she had worked her way through med school as a kick-boxing instructor, and the only criminal who had ever gotten close enough to touch her (the infamous Patrick McCluskey, of the equally infamous Shadyside crime family) had come away from the encounter with three cracked teeth and a broken nose. Holmes, most of the news desk knew, had been involved in a nasty custody battle with her former boyfriend over their baby daughter, and that was far more likely to be at the root of her disappearance.

Of course, since Superman had come to town, Lois was aware that "likely," was not a concept found in ready abundance in Metropolis. "Unlikely," "weird," and "physically impossible, but whatcha gonna do?" were far more regular visitors to the city now. And there was something about this which nagged at her famous intuition. She knew that it was _unlikely_ Holmes' disappearance had any connection to the current hunt for a serial killer, but still…

Deep down, she doubted that Holmes' ex would have been able to take her without any trace of a fight. She knew a fighter when she saw one, and Holmes was it.

"Lois!" the Chief barked, breaking into her reverie "I need you and Kent on this." Lois looked up, unexpectedly panicked (_C'mon Lois, you remember Clark, that person in the three piece suit that you laid into Superman for?_) and felt her face begin to burn. A couple of people had snickered at the mention of her partner, who she noted was nowhere to be seen. She felt her jaw clench automatically, and inwardly winced. She might as well have left a message on the news desk notice board for everyone to see.

"Is there a problem?" Perry snapped, though she wasn't sure whether it was aimed at her or the idiots smirking around the table. She felt a wave of gratitude to her editor for putting a stop to the nudges and winks while they were on office time. "Clark's not here Chief," Gil Truman supplied, blanching as the Chief's eagle eye came to rest on him. He had been snickering the loudest.

"What tremendous observational skills you have, Truman," Perry drawled. "I can see that Kent's not here, but I'm reasonably sure he'll make an appearance at some point, and I trust that Lois will fill him in. Won't you Lane?" He eyed her balefully, making sure she knew that any disagreement with Clark would have to be dealt with outside of office hours: if the idiots didn't get to talk about any potential "situation," then Lois didn't get to shoot her mouth off either.

"Yeah, I can fill him in on anything," she nodded, forcing her voice even and strong as she leaned back against the doorframe. "But I'm not up to speed entirely myself, Chief: why don't you give me what we have?"

The older man nodded. "So far we only know the bare facts. Holmes never made it home from work last night, and her car was found in the parking lot of a SavvyBurger on Joliet Boulevard."

"SavvyBurger? That's the place with the pirate themed food, right?"

Perry nodded. "There were no signs of a struggle, and the car itself was clean of forensic evidence as far as the Crime Lab can tell. No blood, no GSR and a full tank of gas." _It's enough to make me start believing in ghosts, Lois. _She shook away Superman's voice. "The police are currently focussing on the ex-boyfriend, and while it's not sexy enough for television news-" here Lois smiled slightly- "I think that's where our focus should be too."

Lois opened her mouth to ask another question, but the sound of Clark crashing into the conference room drowned her out. He was wearing his overcoat and Lois knew, just **_knew_**, that everyone was waiting for him to take it off so they could check whether he was wearing the same clothes as the night before. "Sorry I'm late, Chief," he said loudly, goofily pushing his glasses up onto his nose. He looked around the room, eyes wide, as if he had absolutely no idea why everyone was staring at him. And to make things even worse, the sonofabitch had gone home and changed his clothes. So not only was he freshly showered (Lois sternly ordered her mind not to draw up _that_ mental image) but he was wearing clean underwear and looking impeccable.

Lois knew being mad over the fact that he'd gotten to do that when she was the one who'd stormed out was irrational, but right now she honestly couldn't give a rat's ass.

"Nice of you to join us, farm boy," she drawled, her gaze boring into his, daring him to say anything in front of the news team. If he fancied himself an actor then let's see how good at play-acting he was. Part of her wanted him to answer her back, to snap or yell or _something_. To fight with her, even if he wouldn't fight for her.

"I overslept," he said quietly. Something in his tone meant nobody was tempted to snicker at his response.

"You've heard the news then?" Jimmy interrupted, trying as always to put everyone at their ease, to stave off a fight.

"No, no I had a bad- I had a bit of trouble getting in. I haven't heard anything." He looked up, suddenly worried. "He hasn't taken another one, has he? Because Sookie Tom hasn't been gone that long and if he's escalating-" There was no need to ask who "he," was. The Ice Sculptor had settled into a pattern of a victim every two weeks, and Tom had only been missing for ten days: they had been counting on more breathing room between victims.

"Your friend the pathologist is missing," Lois said bluntly. She wouldn't, couldn't be tender or kind with an audience.

"Bethany? When did this happen?"

"We think last night-" Last night. When he was with her. _Oh great, another reason for regret._ "There was no sign of a struggle, so she must have known her attacker. Either that or-"

Lois suddenly stopped. She had these moments every so often, when the facts of a case slotted together in her brain like a jigsaw puzzle. The newsroom stopped, holding their breath because they recognised the signs.

"Lois, do you want to share?" Perry asked quietly.

Clark leaned into her, holding onto her elbow, everything else between them forgotten for a moment. "What is it Lois?" he asked softly.

In the dark. His voice in the dark. She shook the memory away.

"Superman told me that Holmes said there was no trace evidence on the body. In fact, he said it was enough to make him start believing in ghosts. Now, I'm no expert, but leaving no trace evidence whatsoever, is usually the sign of a pro."

"But these aren't hits, Lois," Truman protested. "There's absolutely no connection between the victims-"

"She doesn't mean a professional killer, Gil," Clark snapped. It wasn't as shocking as it would have been a month ago. "She means that the killer must work in law enforcement. Maybe even be a criminologist himself, right?"

"But he could've have just watched too many true life crime shows, there's a lot you can learn from TV-"

Lois and Clark rolled their eyes at the same time, and Perry smiled a tiny bit. "Not this much!" Lois said exasperatedly. "Holmes is the best, everyone says so. A talented amateur would not have thrown her off her game that much."

"And you did say the cops believe she knew her attacker," Clark added. They were working together now, two intellects moving together like dancers in time. Everything for a moment forgotten in the thrill of the chase. "She knows everyone in the Metro CSI office; she sees them all in the course of her work."

"What if she got suspicious about somebody? What if she came across something she shouldn't?" Lois could feel the adrenaline beginning to build.

"But that still doesn't answer the question of where she is," Perry interjected. "Or who in the crime lab we should be looking for."

Lois paused, momentarily deflated.

"Uhm, guys?" Jimmy held up his hand. "I might be able to help with that."

The entire newsroom turned to look at him, and the young man paled. "Well?" Lois said tartly.

He sighed. "I have a friend in the Metro crime lab. Her name's Kaylee." His cheeks began to redden. "She owes me a favour, and I could maybe get a look at the duty rosters for the nights of the disappearances, see if a name pops out." Olsen was examining his shoes as he said the last part. Something told Lois that he and Kaylee were more than friends. _There's a sucker born every minute_…

"Okay, we'll look at the duty rosters if we can. Whoever's doing this has probably gotten themselves attached to the investigation." Jimmy nodded to Lois and got up to leave. Belatedly he remembered he should ask the Chief's permission but Perry waved him away. He would have said the same thing. "I have a contact at the 37th precinct, he might be willing to give us the names of the Ice Sculptor task force." She would definitely owe Scott Domidenko a favour if he came through on this one. Though it would not involve another date, since the last one had become the stuff of anti-romance legend around the office. Clark wouldn't look at her as she said it. Would he ever look at her again? she wondered… But this was not the time for thinking like that.

"Lois, we should also look into family and background history." Clark sounded unsure of himself again, though this time she suspected it was to do with last night. He looked _scared_ to talk. "There must be a trigger for these killings."

"There is, he's a monster." No-nonsense Lane to the rescue.

"He's a killer with a type, Lois," Clark said quietly. "There must be a young woman in his background with long red hair. Maybe a mother or a sister. We should look into that too." He crossed his arms, and any other time she would have thought he was being stubborn. She was tempted to say no just to see if he'd dig his heels in, but she reminded herself sternly that this was too important. Holmes might be dying somewhere, and they seemed to be her best chance at the minute. Playing games could wait.

"Of course, you're right Clark." Damn but it had been hard to say that. "I'll see what I can find on family backgrounds. Nobody with a rap sheet would be allowed to join the Crime Lab, so whoever triggered this is someone else's victim, not the Ice Sculptor's."

A beat of silence.

"Well you heard her people," Perry barked. "Go!"

Within seconds the conference room was empty, even Perry retiring to his office. The adrenaline which had been coursing through Lois a minute ago seemed to evaporate. Suddenly she felt like she'd run a million miles, the reverberation of her heartbeat smashing through her body like it could shake her to pieces.

God she missed her equilibrium.

"I'm glad to see you here Lois," he said quietly, tightly. He wouldn't look at her, and she couldn't look at him. "I didn't know whether I'd get to talk to you today."

She wanted to tell him that of course she'd be here, that farm boys and their nasty, heart-breaking ways weren't enough to scare her out of the one place that felt like home to her. She wanted to scream at him that he was killing her, that he was nothing and nobody to her. She wanted to apologise, to forgive. She wanted to take this morning back and do it over again. But her days of believing in do-overs were long gone, and like so many times before, she had something else she should be focussing on.

At least saving the life of Bethany Holmes was a more worthwhile reason for running from her feelings than chasing after Superman.

"We should get to work, Clark," she said instead. Her voice sounded deadened, even to her. "We can talk more later. I-" She thought of Superman, and felt that jolt of panic as she imagined never seeing him again. "I think I've talked enough for one day." She knew she sounded bitter.

He sighed, still unable to meet her gaze. Maybe he knew that the chances of their ever really talking about what had happened were dwindling to zero. Maybe he wanted her to push him, since she was always the one who pushed.

_Push me back, Clark. Fight me on this. Please._

She pushed the whining little voice away, her hurt already being overlaid with disgust at herself. Why should I do all the running? she asked herself. Even if I am the one in all this who always pushes, why can't he do it just this once? I know what he can do when he has a fire lit under him.

_Aren't I enough to fight for? _

Abruptly she picked up her jacket, unable to take the tension in the room anymore. "We'll talk when we catch this guy," she muttered.

"Sure Lois," he replied, his voice equally muffled. No honesty here in the cold light of day, she thought to herself. The only place she ever told the truth was in the dark. She'd thought they had that in common. Now she knew she'd been wrong.

God she hoped she wasn't wrong about Holmes too.

A/N There should be another update soon. Let me know what you think:-)


	7. Chapter 7

_Disclaimer: _This fiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended.

Thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed, hope this continues to appeal.

**IN THE DARK**

_Chapter Seven_

_It's the weirdest thing, but I don't remember most of that day. I mean, I know it happened, I'm pretty sure I made phone-calls and checked out maps and did all the things I usually do. I just don't remember it_._ I don't remember dialling Domidenko's number and asking for his help; I don't remember Jimmy handing me that list of names fresh from his girlfriend's laptop. (Apparently she came down in person when she heard "his," theory). I don't remember talking to Holmes' boyfriend, but he said afterwards that I was really helpful and put his mind at ease. There's a buzz around the bull-pen on a day like that, and everyone runs on ego and excitement; I suppose that must have been what I was running on too. _

_I definitely wasn't using the disappearance of a young woman to keep my mind from dwelling on the almighty cock-up I'd made of my life. No sir. _

_The thing about movies and books is that they always make out that inspiration hits, and the results arrive about, like, ten seconds later. But everyone who's ever worked on any project knows that real life doesn't happen in montage. Figuring out who did what and when with who takes a lot of tedious, tiring, frustrating grunt-work. The only reporter I've ever met who doesn't dread that end of things is Clark, and that's only because he seems to get through it at a superhuman speed. I sometimes used to wonder whether he got through it faster because he liked it, or whether he liked it because he could get through it faster than the rest if us. I never did ask him which it was. All I knew was that every second we spent reading and re-reading was maybe a second that Bethany Holmes didn't have. I'm seasoned enough, however, to know that a mind-set like that doesn't help anyone: you keep half your mind on watching the clock and you've only got half your mind on your job. And that doesn't do the victim any favours._

_I explained to Scottie about my theory when I called asking for the Ice Sculptor task force's names, and he said that he'd look into it, but the police were still focussing on the former boyfriend. From their point of view it did make more sense. And they do answer to City Hall, and the tax payer. The only person I usually answer to is Perry. He'd told me to run with it, and I had, taking most of the news desk with me to do it. I just hoped that I'd backed the right horse. _

_But this stuff, the grunt work, isn't that important. I just have to describe it, because if I don't then the rest of this little story won't make much sense. As it turned out, there was one name which popped straight out of the police files at us, once we knew what we were looking for. One name which I'll probably remember and shudder at till the day I die. But it wasn't that one name which proved the key to the case. Not really. _

_The key to everything was Lana Lang. I just hadn't realise it yet._

"Here you go Lois." The tell-tale black and cream take-away cup of Rigoletti's Coffee Co. appeared like magic before her. It was near three in the morning and Lois was so tired that she thought for a moment she must be hallucinating. Once the smell wafted to her nose however she realised it was real enough. Her eyes followed the wonderful hand which had delivered it, expecting to see a smiling Jimmy Olsen. Instead, a wan Clark Kent met her gaze.

"Thanks, Clark," she said, straightening up and self-consciously sliding her bare feet off the desk. She'd taken off her heels about, oh, four hours ago, and had no intention of ever putting them back on again. Even if it meant walking home in her stocking feet. Clark's eyes followed as she slid her legs underneath the desk, and for one embarrassing moment neither said anything, painfully aware of the sudden tension which filled the air. Lois felt the heat rise her face: the way she…saw Clark had changed so much in the last two days, and there was no way she could go back to the way she used to view him. There was no way she could un-know what she knew about him, about skin and hands and voice. The over-head lights had been turned down hours ago and now only a couple of desk lamps illuminated the bull-pen; the traffic whispered outside while the computers hummed. It was very easy to believe, suddenly, that there was nobody else in the world but them, and that they were once again alone in the dark.

_Bullshit, Lane: get your head back in line._

She resolutely turned away from him, desperate to get away from the tension, the vibration which seemed to buzz between them now. She was angry and hurt and confused; but she still felt that traitorous thrill of being around him. The genie was out of the bottle: she couldn't ever pretend that Clark was just… Clark. A man without the maleness. Inwardly she shook her head in amused despair: he was 6"4 and built like a quarter-back! She'd _known_ he was a guy.

But then she hadn't. She hadn't let herself notice. Too busy chasing after Superman. Kent would have been too damn dangerous to her if she'd admitted he was a guy. If she truly wanted him out of her life, she should point out that she'd spent that last two years thinking of him as some sort of maiden aunt. She couldn't imagine a male ego that would suffer through that.

And yet she didn't want to hurt him. Not any more. Not since her anger had caused her to lash out at Superman. Hurt? Check. Angry? Check. Vengeful? Well, not so much. She would just keep her head down and her mouth and heart closed, and everything would blow over. After all, that seemed to be Kent's plan for their future. Letting her feelings have free rein had caused enough heartache.

Lois stretched, the muscles in her back and neck protesting loudly. She knew she should sit up straight, he'd said it to her more than once, but she never thought of that when she had a dead-line, and this was invariably the result. _It's not like you have any other reasons to be tense, now is it Lane? _She laughed mournfully to herself. She stretched her neck muscles, first this way, then that. Her long brown hair was pulled tightly off her face; there did not seem to be a spot above her shoulders which didn't ache.

_To hell with this, _she thought: _enough with the instant face-lift_. She stood up, stretching towards the ceiling, and pulled her hair down, enjoying the sudden release she felt shoot through her scalp. She really should get it cut short again, save herself the trouble of having to tie it back all the time. She twiddled her toes, feeling them dig into the carpet, before bouncing back on her heels, head tipped back towards the ceiling. Idly she wondered whether everyone had gone home, whether she was the only person left at The Planet. She might sleep here at her desk: somehow it seemed more appealing than going home to her own, cold bed, and lying awake trying to figure out what she'd done wrong… For here in the wee small hours of the morning, the fear that had been haunting her all day was making its presence felt.

"Are you alright Lois?" he asked quietly, making her jump.

She glowered at him for a moment, before plonking herself angrily back into her chair.

"Should I take that as a no?" he inquired, smiling slightly.

"You shouldn't sneak up on people Clark." Now there was a statement just dripping in subtext.

"You're always saying I make more noise than an army," he said mildly, and she resisted the urge to swat at him. He seemed to be under the impression they were still playing _harmless _games. She turned sharply away and winced, the muscles in her neck protesting at the sudden move. He frowned, and made a move for her neck, as he had done an infinite amount of times before when she complained about muscle ache. Of course, this was the first time he'd tried anything of the sort since last night, and Lois acted on instinct, pushing him roughly away.

"Lois, I'm not going to hurt you-" he began.

"It's a bit late for that, don't you think?" Well, at least she'd snapped at someone she had a right to be angry with, she thought dryly.

"I'm just trying to help," he said as quietly as a mouse.

"I know you are." It was all, suddenly, she could think to say to him. Nothing else. Nothing about Superman, or the case, or even the weather. She felt like those were the last four words she would ever utter in his presence.

"I'm trying to make it better." And she knew he was, the mook. He was just going about it the wrong way. They both were.

"You can't fix this Clark," she said sadly. "There's no way to fix this. No way to fix me." She mumbled the last few words.

"I don't want to fix you!" he sounded bewildered. "Nobody could fix you!"

"Oh great, thanks," she could feel her anger beginning to mount again.

"Lois, nobody could fix you, you're perfect."

"Perfect? Perfect am I? If I'm so goddamn perfect then why did you run away?"

"I'm right here-"

"That's not what I mean and you know it!"

She sat back down, dragging her loose hair fiercely back off her face, her arms folded angrily across her chest. If someone had told her three month ago that she and Clark Kent would one day be arguing like two teenagers at their first dance, she would have told them they needed serious professional help. And then probably slapped them for good measure. She squeezed her eyes shut, already despairing of ever regaining her inner balance. Her emotions seemed to turn on a dime when he was around.

She felt his thumb pressed firmly against the tightest knot of muscles in her left shoulder. There was nothing tentative about it, nor was there anything erotic about it in the slightest. But somehow the sensation, which she associated with so many nights at the office, with peace and work and a time before Yesterday, was oddly calming. Could there be a moment of peace in all this? For a second, she let a tiny part of herself believe there could be. She felt the movement of thumb and fingers kneading at her pain, at her stress. Could she conjure up her friend again and not the stranger she'd woken up to this morning? Because he did feel like a stranger, no matter whose face he wore.

She leaned back slightly, willing the tension, the pain and the hurt to disappear. She felt his chin against the top of her head, his other arm snaking across her throat, almost an embrace but not quite. Maybe if they stuck to the non-verbal communication they wouldn't get into so much trouble. Or maybe the non-verbal communication was what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. She couldn't decide. But despite herself, she turned her cheek towards him, wanting his closeness suddenly. Wanting to say with her body what she couldn't seem to get out of her mouth. His other hand slipped down, catching at her hair. It took her a moment to realise that he was staring at one lock, squeezing it between thumb and forefinger, apparently enrapt.

Nobody had ever stared at her hair before.

"I'm thinking of getting it cut," she announced, to have something, anything to say. "It's a nuisance."

"It's part of you." She pretended not to hear her own words being said back to her. "It's the colour," he muttered to himself. "I can never think of a word to describe the colour."

"The colour is brown." But he wasn't listening, still staring, enchanted.

"It picks up the light," he said softly. "Red hair never does that as well." And then just as suddenly he stepped back, letting her hair fall to her side. She couldn't tell what precisely had prompted this, but the atmosphere was gone.

"What have we got?" she asked, clearing her throat, already cursing herself for letting things go that far. _Fool me once, shame on you…_

"There was only one name attached to the two separate investigations into Rosario Hudson and Georgia Swift, as well as the task force."

"And?" she asked, nettled.

Clark placed a photograph on her desk. "Scott Domidenko finally sent these over." He gestured to the head shot of a skinny blond guy wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt.

"Where have I seen him before?" she asked idly, straining against tiredness and hormones to place him.

"His name is Christopher Derricks. He was on Broadway the day they found Crystal Tappert, when Bethany first filled us in on the case."

It clicked. _Derricks, can you get the vic' in the van while I still have some of my will to live left? _She heard Holmes' voice chime in her ear.

"He's been attached to the investigation from the beginning. He was the one who called in finding Hudson's body."

"And they never suspected him?"

"He's clean. No rap sheet, no history of abuse or mental cruelty. I did however, find this." Clark fished out an old Planet headline, from about seven years ago. She wondered how long it had taken him to find it, then brushed the thought away. A grainy black and white picture stood between lines of prose. Lois read, her heart already beginning to race, her tiredness forgotten.

"Well, we've found the trigger," she announced. "She was his sister."

"_The newly built Winding Acres housing development was in mourning today as they laid to rest the body of 15 year old Marianne Derricks," _Lois read. "_Derricks, who had just won the all-state Spelling Bee, was found brutally beaten on her way home from school three weeks ago. Police believe that this was a crime of opportunity, and while they have ruled out kidnapping or larceny as a motive, they have been unable to shed any light on the young woman's death. "This was a completely incomprehensible crime against a helpless victim," Police Commissioner Julian Teague stated at the funeral. The Derricks family was unavailable for comment, but while the hunt for the perpetrator of so heinous a crime continues we can only hope that this is not the beginning of a spree." _She merely scanned the rest of the article, knowing what she would find: the words "_Catholic school-girl_," "_strawberry blond_," and "_broken wrist_," jumped out at her.

She looked at him. "It all fits, Clark: she had long red hair, and was wearing a St. Christopher medal the day she died." She shook her head. "But how could they have missed this? Surely if Christopher Derricks was ever a suspect they would have had it on record?"

"Jimmy's girlfriend Kaylee said she knows Derricks. He was the one pushing hardest on the case." _You two have that in common_, she thought, and immediately regretted it. "I guess he thought he could hide in plain sight."

"Maybe he wasn't hiding at all." She frowned.

"What's on your mind Lois?"

_You. Superman. Holmes. _

_Me, a rock and a hard place._

Instead she said "Maybe it's not so much of a stretch, him going after these girls. Maybe we've been looking at this wrong." He leaned back onto her desk, as usual giving her all his attention. "There was no signs of assault, except for the broken wrist?" He shook his head. "Clark, I don't think this guy was trying to hurt these girls; I think he was trying to protect them." _It's like he's trying to make them into China dolls…_ "He's taking girls who remind him of his sister, yeah? And he's making sure what happened to her can never happen to them. He's, he's trying to undo the past."

"By murdering them?"

"The sicko probably thinks he's doing them a favour: he sends them to sleep…" All the things she could have missed, all the things she could have avoided, if she hadn't grown up, hadn't become an adult. Maybe Derricks thought that he could save these girls what his sister went through, because judging by the Planet article, Marianne Derricks' last hours on earth had not been peaceful. They had been filled with hurt and humiliation, the likes of which no human being (let alone a 15 year old girl) should ever see.

"He's trying to guard them," Clark said, sotto voce, suddenly looking slightly sick. "To protect them."

Lois didn't buy that completely. "He's trying to stop them from changing. He's not giving them enough credit to become adults. He's taking their choice away, Clark."

"He's saving them."

"He doesn't have the right."

Clark blinked at her. "What?"

"He doesn't have the right to make this decision for them. I don't care whether his heart's in the right place or not, he doesn't have the right to choose whether they get to live or die." She shook her head, disgusted. "He's not a god, Clark. And those girls had the right to grow up, even if they _did_ have a horrible life ahead of them." She paused, taking in her partner's ashen expression.

She couldn't, shouldn't ask this. The asking and the being honest led to the touching and the nakedness and the Pod Person version of Clark she'd woken up to. But she heard her voice saying it, apparently of its own volition. "What is it about this that's bothering you so much?"

He mumbled a couple of syllables which could have been "Nothing."

_C'mon Lane: let's do what you do best. Rush in where angels fear to tread. _"I don't believe you," she said carefully. A pause. She had a feeling..."Is this… is this about Lana?"

He stared at her straight, his gaze suddenly ferocious. Fighting. And then just as suddenly the passion seemed gone, forced back behind the mild-mannered façade he maintained so well. "I can honestly say this is not about Lana," he murmured, the fight gone.

But it was about something else, his tone seemed to imply it. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but he spoke over her. "Superman came by," he said carefully, studiedly not looking at her. Had to hand it to him, he knew how to shut her up.

"Oh?" She tried for unconcerned. She missed.

"Yeah, he had some information." _Yeah, something along the lines of_ "_Your partner's a bitch." _"Wherever Derricks is hiding these girls, it must be lead lined. He can't find them anywhere."

"Oh?" Suddenly that seemed to be her favourite syllable.

At least she wasn't the only one uncomfortable. Maybe he felt sorry about bringing up Superman in such a blunt way. Maybe he realised how bad she felt. _So many damn maybes. _"I was thinking that we can look through the city ordnance maps tomorrow, see if there's anywhere with a link to Derricks that has a lead lined roof," Clark continued, apparently trying to get off the topic of Metropolis' resident superhero. She nodded, looking down, the shame of what she had said to him burning through her memory. "But we'll have to do that tomorrow, there'll be nobody in the Map Office at this hour."

Wait a second.

"We don't need to talk to anyone." He blinked up at her. "I have all that information on my computer already." Again, she felt a surge of hunger, passion of the mind, passion for the body tumbling together to set the pulse racing. "I've been working on a story about the effects of lead lining in low rent accommodation in Shadyside. Had everything researched too but we couldn't get it past the lawyers." She clicked her tongue in annoyance at the memory. "There's a higher rate of infant mortality and asthma in certain Shadyside properties. A concerned parents' group got me onto it: Luthorcorp was refusing their requests to scale back the use of lead in their older properties." She grinned at him despite herself. "Thanks to your buddy Superman lead is now a banned substance in the Metropolis building trade."

"It should be a banned substance everywhere."

"Ah, but only here in Metropolis could we make the argument that it actively interferes with Superman helping out the police. Got it passed in City Hall when I thought nothing ever would." She began clicking through her desk top files. "It's just hard to enforce in the older neighbourhoods, and nobody really cares if it causes health problems in kids in Shadyside."

"How can politicians be so cold?" She was always amazed that human greed seemed to genuinely puzzle him.

"They don't have to live there. But, this could for once work in our favour." She scrolled through her documents, searching for the distribution maps of lead contaminated properties around Metropolis. Within seconds she found it and pulled it up. "Now, this is an overlay of the south side, which is where all the victims were found." She stared at the screen for a minute. "Anything jump out at you?"

He frowned, leaning over her shoulder. "No…Wait, where was it that Holmes' car was found?"

She pointed out Joliet Boulevard. "Here, in the parking lot of a burger joint."

"And the first victim, Rosario Hudson, she was found where?"

Lois could see where he was going with this. "Here, at the top of Broadway. The rest were all found further down, but she wasn't far from Joliet at all, was she?"

"No. But how would he have gotten Holmes out of her car and dragged her to wherever his killing ground is? Wouldn't someone have noticed?"

"Maybe he drugged her? She's staggering, people think her boyfriend's bringing her home and she's drunk." It was a common enough sight. "If he does have a killing ground, then it would make sense that he'd choose somewhere he felt safe. And Derricks is a local boy: the Winding Acres housing development is only about a five minute drive from Joliet."

She'd bet Clark's heart-beat was picking up too at the minute. "Guess where has the highest level of lead roofing outside of Shadyside?"

"Winding Acres?"

"Give the lady a prize."

They both paused, trying to soak the information together.

Clark broke the silence first. "So where does this leave us?"

"Well, if we're right then we've narrowed down the search area. It's just a case of finding out where Derricks might feel safe enough to take his victims." He nodded, getting up to go. "Where are you going?"

He looked a little goosed that she'd asked, tugging unconsciously at his tie and the top button of his shirt. "I um, I thought I should go home. Wait until the morning, then get in touch with the MPD, see what they have to say."

"Really?" She didn't mean to sound quite so incredulous.

He smiled, the first real smile she'd seen from him all day. "Yeah. Unless you have a better idea than going after a serial killer at three in the morning armed only with your temper and my winning personality."

Ah, she had taught him the snark too well. "I suppose."

He seemed distracted all of a sudden, and only too eager to let go what anyone else would have known was a suspiciously easy bit of persuasion. Any other time he would have known better than to think that Lois would give in that meekly. But he was tired, and wired, and something was bothering him, of that she had no doubt. He was too distracted to notice the brightness in her eye as she switched off her computer and walked towards the elevator.

Clark walked her down to the lobby and hailed her a cab, his mind clearly elsewhere. And for that she was grateful.

Because as far as Lois was concerned, she wasn't going anywhere except Winding Acres. Let Clark rest, if that was what he wanted: she never wanted to see her bed again.

_She_ had some sneaking around to do.

A/N Don't worry, it won't turn into an episode of CSI! There's more angst on the way, as well as updates (I knew unemployment has to be good for something...) Please review, if you liked. Please review if you didn't…Cheers


	8. Chapter 8

_Disclaimer:_ This fanfiction is not written for profit and no breach of copyright is intended

CHAPTER EIGHT

_Winding Acres wasn't a big place, I remember that much. It was originally designed as an enclosed community; it was small, orderly and easy to police, the type of place where every street and every house looks kinda the same. But when the money-men withdrew some of their key support amid accusations of payments to politicians, the safety features which were supposed to make it a haven for those tired of the big city disappeared. It's an common enough story: The large gates and the uniformed rent-a-cops never materialised, leaving the majority of its occupants (who had bought directly off plans in the early days) stuck with something very different from what they had imagined. I got the impression afterwards that the death of Marianne Derricks was just the final straw, one last vicious piece of proof that their dream had turned sour; people who had lived there seemed to think the site was cursed. Half the original home-owners left in the two years after the kid's death: in fact the only people who never made any noise about leaving were the bereaved family themselves. I talked to the neighbours afterwards, and they said that the family just seemed to… stop. Like they were frozen in time. The parents, the remaining kid, they got older and went on with their routine, but they were just going through the motions. The Derricks had been white collar, upper middle class professionals: the mother a paediatrician, the father a college lecturer at Metropolis U._ _In fact, I think I might have had him as a lecturer in my freshman year. This was a family which never stepped a toe out of line, which dotted every I and crossed every t. The idea that tragedy could touch them must have seemed preposterous. The Derricks had a history of serving the community, and despite their financial status both parents (and later their remaining son, Christopher) were well known for their selflessness, their commitment to the city in which they lived. They were the good guys._

_I'm really glad I'm not the one who had to explain to James and Sylvia what little Christopher was doing with his nights._

_When I went there, I didn't think I'd actually find anything important. I thought I might go to the street where they lived, look around, maybe get a feel for the guy. I couldn't imagine that I'd actually find him, that it would be so easy to just stumble across a killer when the entire MPD and Superman AND Clark Kent had had so little success trying to do just that. But then it never occurs to me that anything could go wrong until it does. Must be why I keep making the same mistakes over and over again._

_Of course, the biggest mistakes always lead to the best memories, and the most interesting experiences. Not looking before you leap has its good points as well as its bad ones… And I **did** find Christopher Derricks, and help put an end to his little crusade._

_But put it this way, I understand the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." And if the times aren't interesting enough, I seem to have a habit of helping them along…_

Everything was deserted as Lois made her way quietly through Winding Acres, her lighter clutched tightly in one pocket, her pepper spray held firmly in the other. In the early hours of the morning the place seemed eerily quiet, the identical rows of white houses like something out of a horror film.

Inwardly she sighed, exasperated. She was just letting her imagination go into over-drive because she happened to believe that a serial killer was prowling these streets, looking for ways to slowly kill and then dispose of his victims. Which, now she thought about it, was a pretty good reason for being nervous. If Derricks was the Ice Sculptor then he probably did his sick work somewhere around here: his address was still listed as the family home (the parents having moved back to Oregon once mom retired), and Lois' experience told her that the neighbours wouldn't have noticed anything. The young man been here long enough to become part of the scenery, about as note-worthy to those going about their daily business as a piece of gum on the side-walk. It was just the atmosphere of apathy that killers thrived in.

She found the house on Horse Shoe Drive without too much trouble, peeked in the windows and poked at the mail-box. It was in good repair, the paint-work fresh (wouldn't want to stand out amongst the other neighbours, might get them poking their nose in, Lois mused). The lights were off, which probably meant he was asleep or not home. While no stranger to illegal entry (she'd even managed to teach _Clark_ how to pick a lock) Lois didn't think it'd be smart to try and get in. Firstly she doubted he'd be stupid enough to keep his victims in his home, and secondly Judge Margulies had made it clear that if she ever heard of Lois pulling another B&E in the search for truth and justice then she'd throw the book at her. She'd only just managed to avoid jail time over that little mix-up over Luthor's private office (an open door _was_ an invitation in her book) and she didn't want to be remanded in custody again.

No, despite the claims of her peers, Lois Lane wasn't completely crazy.

And then she heard it. A crash seemed to reverberate through the quiet streets. Lois cocked her head, her curiosity piqued, and followed her ears. The crash was succeeded by another, and then another, but try as she might she couldn't place the source of the sounds. She wandered around to the back of the house, ears straining for something, anything to indicate direction, but the noise was too muffled. Every house was in darkness; not even a dog barked. The noises had stopped, silence prevailed again. She frowned, annoyed that she couldn't find her target.

Another crash, even louder this time.

It was definitely coming from the back of the house, but she couldn't be sure of anything else. Lois gritted her teeth and without a moment's hesitation pulled herself over the chain-mail fence which surrounded the garden. She paused, waiting to see if she'd tripped the security system but no alarm sounded. The noises were getting louder now, and Lois could clearly distinguish the sounds of a fight.

It was coming from…beneath her?

The garden was dominated by a huge horse chestnut tree, which was in the process of shedding its leaves for the fall. Roofing stretched over the back porch steps to the edge of the tree's branches, essentially blocking out the light from the street lamps behind. Lois made for the back steps, determined to try the door, and as she did so she tripped over something, catching her heel. She stopped, examining the ground with the pale moonlight. Underneath her feet, covered in a carpet of foliage, she could just about discern a square of wood which looked suspiciously like a trap-door. Now that she was looking for it she could barely make out light poking through the edges of it; she crouched down, running her fingers over rusty metal hinges. Obviously this was a storm cellar of some kind, though why it wasn't marked on the plans she'd shown Clark of Winding Acres was a mystery. Lois was standing toe to toe with it, wondering whether she was seeing things, when it bounced upwards, as if someone beneath it were trying to force their way out.

_Which one was it? _she wondered, _Holmes or Derricks?_

She pulled out her cell, praying she'd get a reception out here, and called 911. Ducking behind the chestnut tree she whispered her location to the operator.

"I'm sorry Miss, could you please repeat that and speak up?"

The trapdoor smacked ominously upwards again. _No, she couldn't goddamn repeat that and speak up_. "I said," she whispered "I'm at 582 Horse Shoe Drive in the Winding Acres housing estate and I believe that a crime is being committed. So could you **_please_** send someone?" Lois tried to bite back the testiness in her voice, but knew she wouldn't be successful. She had the bad feeling that this night was going to end in a free, frank and open exchange of ideas, opinions and possibly gun-fire. The trapdoor hadn't moved in a few seconds, and she felt sickness to her stomach as she thought that maybe Holmes had lost her battle. She would have to go in now, there was no way she could leave the body there. And if she went away and came back with help he might be gone, might have noted a disturbance in his yard and taken off, and then where would that leave the families of Bethany and Sookie Tom? He was smart, and resourceful: he slipped the net now and they might never find him again. No, she would definitely have to go in.

She was Lois Lane, ace reporter: there was precious little she couldn't handle in the name of a story. She just wished, for the first time in her life, that she had someone here to watch her back. Someone who twelve months ago she would have thought physically incapable of backing her up without getting them both killed. She wanted Clark there, if only so she could vent her stress by snapping at him.

_But then that would mean that he would be in danger too, wouldn't it?_

No, it was better that Clark wasn't there.

"C'mon, Lois," she muttered to herself. "Take it like a man."

Kneeling down, feeling for the reassuring weight of her pepper spray (and remembering she had a tazer in her purse if it was truly necessary) Lois began scrambling in the dirt for the trapdoor latch. She couldn't hear anything now: she laid her head over the trapdoor, holding her breath as she listened for some evidence of movement, but there seemed to be none. For a moment she thought she could hear breathing and leaned closer to the door, her knees sliding painfully in the earth as she tried to get a better position. She placed her ear directly over the door and then-

The door crashed upwards with an almighty smack, catching her across her jaw and pushing her head back with a sickening crick. A tall, skinny figure appeared from the door and Lois didn't hesitate, swinging her feet up to catch him in the solar plexus, hoping to stun him enough to get a head start. He did fall back, but as she swung herself onto her knees to try to stand up he grabbed her ankle, his hands going for her hair. Yanking her back towards him he pulled her to the trapdoor, both of them tumbling haphazardly down the stairs into the storm cellar, Lois landing painfully on her side. Though she was winded she forced herself to her feet, determined to run back up those steps, because even the fearless Lois Lane knew that the women who saw the inside of this place never got to see anything else.

And then she heard it.

In the dark, she could just make out the shape of something moving, breathing beside the trap door. Momentarily distracted she peered into the shadows: could that be Holmes? It was all the distraction he needed: Derricks grabbed her by the back of the neck. She spun around and slugged him, throwing him the best punch she had and then making for the steps again. She got maybe three paces and then stopped in her tracks, stunned.

The sonofabitch had used her own tazer on her.

And then once again, Lois Lane was in the dark.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: This fan fiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended.

Unbetaed, so all mistakes are mine. I decided to re-post chapter nine, because I thought it was a little too short and anti-climactic. (In actuality, I felt like I'd short-changed everyone who's taken the time to read). So here it is; nothing new happens, but there's more detail. More like Chapter nine: redux. Or Chapter nine: The Director's Cut. Cheers!

**CHAPTER NINE**

Lois came through with a headache she usually associated with a hangover. Her head was pounding and she felt sick; he must have given her something after he knocked her out, because a taser blast wouldn't have had so much of an effect. A taser blast also wouldn't have put her out for very long either, but if she'd been slipped something else then who knew how long she'd been unconscious for?

He was sitting before her in the indistinct light thrown by computers and surveillance equipment, silhouetted. Lois silently berated herself: She should have known better than to think that anyone in law enforcement would have a security system which warned you when you tripped it. The light from the night-vision cameras was eerie and green, dancing over his skin: it made her feel strangely like she was stuck at the bottom of the ocean, a little mermaid trapped with a monster of the deep, a monster who had once been a man.

_Cut it out, Lois_, she ordered herself sternly, _he's only flesh and blood_. _The Devil hasn't come to Metropolis._

Derricks was smiling at her, his open, honest face incongruous with the paranoia-steeped milieu he was sitting in. There were cameras _everywhere_. His large hands were strewn with leather bracelets and friendship bands. He looked like a surfer, scruffy and relaxed. But there was an… intentness to his gaze which chilled her, made her think unaccountably of a hawk.

She went to move her hands and realised they were tied. _Wonderful_. Yup, the ankles too. She was tied to the chair she was sitting in.

"Who's Clark?" Derricks began in a conversational tone, as if they were old friends catching up. Not what she'd expected.

Lois was tempted not to answer, but maybe getting him talking was a better bet. "Why do you want to know about Clark?" she asked in a slightly teasing tone, ignoring her heart-beat hammering in her chest. _Play along, play along_, her mind chanted. _See of you can talk him into dropping his guard for a second_.

"I just wondered," Derricks answered airily. "When I picked you up you mumbled a name. I'm assuming it's whoever you're pimping your services out to right now." The grin he shot her was smugly insolent, and Lois swallowed back her furious retort. What happened between her and her partner was none of this bastard's business, and it certainly couldn't be filed under "pimping out her services." But she knew she was in no position to lose her temper and so did he. _Obviously he doesn't like the idea that I have a sex life_, she thought. _After all, he freezes his girls before adulthood can hit…_

"Is that why I'm here?" she retorted, trying to keep her voice light. "Because I'm a bad girl who goes running after boys and doesn't stay locked up like a nice girl should? Is that why you took Holmes too?"

"Those are very insightful questions, Miss Lane." He sounded like the dictionary definition of "patronising." He shook his head smilingly, an "aw shucks," grin on his face which reminded her a tiny bit of Clark. Suddenly she felt sick to her stomach. "You and Holmes are here because you've interfered with my work, and you have to be eliminated. You two don't deserve to be saved."

"Saved? You really think that's what you're doing to these girls, saving them?" she scoffed.

"I wouldn't expect you to understand what I'm doing for these girls. _You've_ never been innocent."

Her own smile was as smug as his. "Right back at ya, buddy." A pause. "So _that's_ why I'm here, then? I'm interfering with your plot to save Metropolis' school girl population?" _See if you can get a reaction, take away his control of the conversation…_

"Don't try your Psych 101 hijinks on me, Lane," he snapped, and Lois realised that she'd hit her mark. "This isn't about a fear of the female form, or rage at my mother, or hatred of women. I _like_ girls. Girls are wonderful, girls are sweet." His smile grew melancholic. "I'm helping, that's what nobody gets. _I'm_ the good guy here."

"Sure you are," she drawled. "You love the little girls. You love them so much that you kill them so that they can't become women, can't learn to stand on their own two feet-"

"You're boring me, Miss Lane," he interrupted. "I've been analysed by the best of them; _you_ won't add anything new. And you know what? They all said the same thing: that I needed to find a way to make a difference, to help. It's what _she_ would have wanted. This is all about her, not me."

Lois stared at him, not bothering to hide her disgust. "_She_ wants you to enforce your need for control on the bodies of innocent children, does she? _She _wants you to go into the most ego-boosting business of all, killing? Because I've met some killers in my day, and the one thing they all have in common is the fact that they want to be in control, that they can't stand being helpless." Lois leaned back in her seat. "But I forgot: you're the good guy here, aren't you? How very convenient for you, Christopher."

The look on his face told Lois that she'd hit a nerve. And not in a good way.

"She was taken, taken while she was still innocent, still perfect," he snapped, rising and beginning to pace. "She was a little angel, you know that? Never fought, never pushed: trusted everyone." He leaned over Lois, putting his face directly in hers. "Not like the others, not like the ones who think the world should be hard and bad. Nothing about her was cold, was harsh. She was soft, gentle…" He looked away. "She wasn't a cold bitch like you."

"_She_ had a name," Lois snapped. "Or have you forgotten that it was Marianne? Has _Marianne_ really just become another face to you?" _Was she not even a person to him anymore, but merely an excuse for what he was doing, for the power-play and the thrill of the chase? _She kept on, driving her point home. "You see, I think that all this is really about is poor little Christopher, and how he can't accept that he can't control everything in the world, that he's not the lord of all goddamn creation." Lois thought of her own actions, of her lashing out at Superman, of her not pushing Clark that morning in her apartment because she hadn't known what it would lead to. Oh, she understood what it felt like to crave control. _Now that was a disturbing thought_. He was staring at her very hard, and she realised that she had his attention now. _See if you can get a reaction, see if you can gain the upper hand, Lois_. "That's what this is all about really, isn't it, Christopher?" Lois continued, determined to keep using his first name, to keep the interaction with him personal. If she let him begin to view her as a thing, her days would be well and truly numbered. Things can't feel or die: it doesn't matter if you kill a _thing_. "Rules and regulations: pretending there's order in the universe when deep down we all know it's really chaos. It's Us and Them. You _need_ there to be an Us and a Them. Because then there are boundaries. There are Angels and Demons. Or is it Madonnas and whores?"

"Guess which one you are," he hissed, leaning his face into hers, his breath revolting her. His hand went to her throat, the fingers twitching as if he wanted to squeeze. Lois swallowed down her fear, forced herself to continue. She wouldn't beg, she wouldn't cower. She wasn't a little girl and she would not play his game his way. She met his eyes fiercely.

"I'm a Lois. I don't need to be a virgin and I certainly don't need to be a whore. And when I get out of this (and I **_will_** get out of this) I'm going home to a man who doesn't need me to choose a category, either." She grinned triumphantly. "Clark likes _grownups_." As she said it her thoughts went to Clark, and she felt her chest constrict. If this didn't work, if he began to squeeze- Would she ever get to see him again, to tell him that she was sorry that she'd behaved like an idiot? Would Clark, who knew all the bad bits and the good bits and seemed to like her anyway, know that her last thoughts had been of him? Of Clark, who was dumb and freaked about what had happened and probably just as terrified as she was. Clark, who she'd thought had broken her heart, but who had really just pushed her to confront some things about herself that she hadn't wanted to confront. She knew him inside and out, the good bits and the bad bits too, and she _knew _why he'd behaved the way he did. He wanted her, and she had been too scared to push. But so what if she was always the one who did that, so what if she was always the one who forged ahead? She'd rather talk to Clark and fix things then bottle up her anger and lose him; that would just be cutting off her nose to spite her heart.

Down here in the dark, Lois realised irrevocably that she would have to talk to Clark, because life was too precious and precarious and filled with people like Christopher Derricks to not fight for what you want. And she did want him, mook that he was; she knew that now.

Perfect wasn't interesting: perfect wasn't real. Even if it talked to you and leapt tall buildings in a single bound.

Clark was there in her heart: She'd known that, deep down, from the moment she'd felt her own fury that he was hurting. He made her fierce, and he could handle that she was. The rest of it, the fear and doubt? She could go through it with him, force herself to open up. Because she was honestly more afraid of losing him than of letting him see what she was truly made of. _So this is what addicts refer to as a moment of clarity_. She would have laughed, if she hadn't been in so much trouble. There in the dark she could see the truth of things between them.

_And the truth can set you free._

"Behold, modern woman," Derricks snapped caustically. "You think you can touch what I feel for my sister with this, this three week affair? You think it's in the same goddamn league? We were perfect, young and innocent and _perfect_. You're nothing but damaged goods."

"And that's the point." Lois leaned forward as best she could, pressing her advantage now. "I've lived. I've made mistakes and screwed up. But I'm not hiding in a basement trying to make the world over in my image." _Gods and men, why did it always come down to gods and men?_ "The devil's in the details Christopher, and life is in the screw-ups. And maybe I am a screw-up, but that's my right. That's my most fundamental right. And when you take these girls, you take that right away. You violate them just as surely as the sick bastards who took Marianne violated her."

Well, she got a reaction. He charged her, yelling like a lunatic, and smashed his fist firmly into her nose, the other hand going around her throat. Her eyes welled up, blood, snot and tears clouding her vision. He began pummelling at her, holding her head in place with one hand, and Lois cursed herself, fury at her own helplessness sweeping over her. In his haste he tipped her chair backwards and Lois, disorientated as she was, took her shot: she swept her legs over the upturned chair legs, feeling the ropes tying her loosen as they were released from the surface which had kept them taut. Her hands were still tied but this was a start. She kneed Derricks in the groin and pushed him off her, tearing her way through the nearest door, trying to limit the size of her paces so her still-tied legs wouldn't trip and cause her to fall. She could see the stairs ahead of her, see her escape. He was still rolling in pain; she glanced over her shoulder to see blood on his temple and along his jaw line. She suddenly realised that she'd hurt him more badly than she'd thought, maybe knocking the chair legs into his head as she's made her break for freedom. But she couldn't think about that right now. He stopped moving, but Lois was too smart to head back and see if he was unconscious.

Freedom, and Clark, and the cold light of day, lay ahead of her.

She felt something tugging at her pants leg and looked down to see Bethany Holmes, her face a mass of bruises and cuts, staring up at her through tired eyes. The pathologist looked dire, but she was still breathing. It wasn't in Lois to leave her there.

She stopped, pulling off her jacket and draping it around the woman's shoulders, rubbing them down when she felt how cold the other woman was through the fabric. "Can you walk?" she asked tightly.

"Does it look like I have a choice?" Holmes offered her a broken, tremulous smile. Lois began to help her up, straining every second for the sounds of Derricks' return. The pathologist was clearly in a terrible state, and her right leg wouldn't take her weight but she gritted her teeth and tried again.

_I know a fighter when I see one_, Lois thought. They shared a grin.

They were nearly at the door, Holmes hopping but determined, Lois trying desperately to listen for signs of the killer's return. Everything seemed agonizingly still. And then two things happened at once. Behind her she heard the shuffle of feet and turned just in time to make out Derricks' outline. In the dim light she could see that he was holding a shotgun. And then before her, the trapdoor sprang open, obviously pulled up from outside. She just had a moment to register Clark Kent's worried face poking through the door and then…

Then, the shot rang out.


	10. Chapter 10

_Disclaimer_: This fan fiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright in intended.

**CHAPTER TEN**

_I'd never seen Clark Kent angry. It's strange to say it, but I'd never seen the guy lose his temper, in all the time I'd known him. I'm a screamer; I throw things if I get into enough of a fit. My mom says I was always like that, even when I was little. I suppose that's why the Chief originally put of together: he figured that the chemistry would be interesting between two people with such radically different ways of dealing with the world. And that's why I always thought that Clark was a pushover, because I didn't realise that he had another way entirely of doing things. Still waters run deep and all that._

_Apparently when it came to me still waters run very damn deep. And sometimes, if you push them enough, they break their banks and flood._

_Like I said, I'd never seen Clark react like that to anything, but when that shot rang out… I don't think I'd have recognised the man who charged into that storm cellar if I hadn't seen his face just moments before. _

_But it was Clark Kent, I'm sure of that._

_At least, I'm 99.9 sure._

He's hit.

It was the only thought her mind could register as she saw her partner charge down the stairs and ram headlong into Derricks. The force of the blow pushed the man back, smacking him into the wall of the storm-cellar, dislodging some of the cheap white plaster which covered everything down here. It looked painful, savage, and the only way Lois could imagine her gentle, quiet partner hitting anyone with that much force was to assume he'd been shot and lurched forward. Surely his own momentum as he'd tumbled would have done that. Surely the last breath of a dying man would explain how he could hit Derricks with such force. Because her Clark would never strike anyone with that much violence.

_I've lost him. Oh Jesus, I've lost him._

She wanted to scream but nothing would come out.

And that's when she realised her hands were wet and sticky.

It took a momentous act of will to tear her eyes from the two men down towards her own palms. In the eerie green light of the cameras the blood which was seeping through her fingers looked black, not red. Lois stared, unable to comprehend what she was seeing, for what seemed an eternity.

_He wasn't, it hadn't-_

Holmes grabbed her hands, twisting her fingers painfully, and she was suddenly snapped back into real time. The pathologist's grip was tearing, her large grey eyes nearly turned back in her head. "It's my…It's my-"

"Clark!" Lois spoke over her, far closer to panic than she'd ever let her voice go before. The furious reporter seemed intent on Derricks, every ounce of his concentration focussed on the man beneath him. "Clark!" she screamed, letting the panic into her voice now, suddenly terrified of what he'd do, of what he'd enact on the now-unconscious Derricks, if she didn't get his attention. Holmes didn't have much time, and she couldn't hope to lift her on her own. "Clark, Bethany's been shot."

He stopped so suddenly it felt for a moment like the pair of them had fallen off the edge of the world. The huge blue eyes were wide behind his glasses, uncomprehending, as if she'd spoken in a foreign language. He stared at her, and any other time she would have snapped angrily, her usual take-charge self. But she couldn't. He looked so…lost. She wasn't sure why, but the incomprehension in his eyes terrified her. His gaze flicked from Holmes to her and back again.

"You're not wearing your coat."

Of all the things she'd expected him to say, that definitely hadn't been one of them.

"You gave Bethany your coat." Again, that lost, mechanical voice. He didn't seem to understand what he was saying.

"Yes I did, and now she's been shot." He looked, she belatedly realised, like he was going into shock. Lois lowered her voice, despite her fear, trying to keep it smooth and soothing. "Clark, I need you to lift her, I can't do it on my own."

Kent continued to stare at her for what felt like an age, the waxy stillness of near-tears transforming his face. The moment seemed to elongate, to stretch out over eons, though Lois knew on some level it was only seconds. And then, suddenly, her partner was back before her, right in front of her, gently lifting Holmes by her, trying not to jar the young woman. "Lois, would you get the door?" he asked politely, as if seconds before he hadn't been still as a statue. She did as he asked, running up the steps ahead of him, pushing the door which luckily hadn't automatically re-locked.

The fresh morning breeze fanned her face as Lois turned into the dawn, carefully stepping out into the light and holding open the door.

Clark followed seconds later, cradling Holmes like she was a broken doll.

The next door neighbour's dogs immediately began to bark, sensing the presence of strangers in their patch. The biggest, a huge Irish wolfhound, began jumping against the chain fence which surrounded the property, smashing its paws into the wire with energy. Within seconds it sounded like every canine within a three mile radius had decided to join in. The neighbours would be waking up soon, that was for sure. "I need somewhere to put her-" he said tightly, both of them trying not to notice how pale and feverish the young woman looked. Lois had already pulled out her cell-phone and was dialling 911, hopping impatiently from foot to foot, praying someone would pick up.

"Hello, 911, how may I direct your call?"

_Nobody who works in the public sector should sound that cheerful at this time of the morning, _Lois thought sourly. But she relayed her location, giving careful details of the property and making sure that she dropped Holmes' name. Law enforcement looked after their own, after all.

"Lois, she's fading," Clark interrupted urgently.

"Fine, we'll put her in the house," she answered, equally concerned. Without thinking twice she picked up a huge fallen branch from the horse-chestnut tree beside her and smacked it against the glass-panelled backdoor of Derrick's home. The windows gave in easily, and Lois leaned in, unlocking the door from the inside. She just hoped it wasn't booby-trapped; it didn't seem to be. Clark followed her in, making immediately for the kitchen just visible to his right, laying his charge down on the huge table underneath the windows and haphazardly pulling open drawers, grabbing knives and towels.

"Boil the kettle," he ordered, and for once Lois did as she was told, ignoring her shaking hands as she twisted the taps and filled it, before setting it to heat.

"Lois, I need hot water and something to bind the wound until the paramedics get here. Sheets would be good."

"I can do sheets." She didn't need to be told twice, but immediately set off for the bedrooms, relieved to be able to do something, gulping in the fresh air and light unconsciously, so delighted to be anywhere but that goddamn storm cellar. She found the hot-press without any trouble and pulled three pure white sheets out, bundling them up in her haste, before running back down stairs. As she re-entered the kitchen she noticed Clark staring at the young woman over the rims of his glasses, his head angled downward. As soon as he saw her he pushed them firmly back up onto his nose, hiding most of his face as he did so.

She'd never noticed what big hands he had before. It seemed a strange thing to strike her now.

Holmes was lying on the table, Lois' jacket a torn pile on the floor beside her. The pathologist was wearing only her vest, jeans and bra. The bullet had gone straight through, no doubt the reason she was losing so much blood, leaving a wound like a bloody sunset against her pale skin. But she did look better than she had even five minutes ago. And it was the weirdest thing, but she wasn't bleeding anymore. Lois leaned forward, unsure of how so much blood-loss could have been stemmed.

The gunshot looked like it had been cauterized.

She looked at Clark and he refused to meet her gaze.

_Thank God Holmes wasn't conscious for that_, she thought to herself. _But what on earth did he use? And how on earth did he know to do it?_

"Old farm trick," he muttered, apparently uncomfortable under her stare. "Heat is quicker than pressure for stopping a wound." He motioned with his eyes to the hob, and Lois decided she didn't want to know what the rest of that sentence might entail. She knew how he hated to hurt anyone, even if it was for his their own good.

"Sometimes you have to hurt someone to save them Clark," she said softly.

_Aint that the truth. _But he didn't answer her.

"Do you need anything else?" she whispered, strangely unwilling to disturb the patient with by raising her voice. "Does she need to be kept conscious?"

"I can do that for the moment," he replied, squeezing Holmes' hand. She smiled a little, despite everything. Lois knew that there was something else.

"Clark, what is it?"

"Lois," he tore his eyes away from the young woman, "When you were down there, did you- Did you see Sookie Tom?"

She shook her head. "No, I was unconscious for most of it." Lois cocked her head, her intuition calling. "But that storm cellar isn't very big; I'm sure I would have seen if she was down there." A pause. "Which means she's probably somewhere here."

"And if she is…"

Lois nodded. "Then she might still be alive." She headed to the door, relieved to have a clear-cut plan of action. If the young woman was hidden somewhere within the house she would find her. She would bring her back into the bright light of day.

She searched the ground floor easily: there was only a hall, a porch, the kitchen and a tiny TV room. Back upstairs she headed, praying she'd be successful, needing to believe that she could turn this mess into something good.

The door at the end of the landing was painted buttercup yellow, a tiny sign of painted flowers declaring it "Marianne's Room." Lois knew what she would find the moment she saw it. Slowly she pushed the door open, the paint creaking and cracking from lack of use. Inside there was a pretty four poster bed, the coverlet and pillowcases festooned with yellow roses and stuffed toys. But this place was cold, freezing: her breath misted before her face, mushrooming into clouds. Something about this room just wasn't…right.

Every inch of the room was dominated by porcelain dolls, tacked and nailed onto the walls, their never-living limbs arranged in a mockery of human activity, their painted, unseeing eyes glazed and empty. A couple were wearing school-girl uniforms, their hair pulled tightly into plaits. _It's like he wants to turn them into China dolls… _And there on the bed, her hands placed demurely across her stomach, lay Derrick's latest doll: Sookie Tom, her tan-and-freckled skin ethereal in the early morning light. Lois stepped carefully into the room, her heart already beginning to pound. A paint-brush sat on the bedside unit beside Tom's head, resting against the rim of a pot of transparent PVC. The pearl-like sheen of the girl's skin couldn't be natural, Lois knew it the moment she set eyes on her.

She was too late, she'd been too late.

And just when Lois thought this couldn't get any more sickening, she noticed something: the girl's chest was rising and falling ever so slightly, the breath seeming to hitch in her throat. He'd begun painting her while she was still alive. Somehow that fretful motion went to Lois' heart more than anything else, reminding her of Lucy as a baby, reminding her just how young this monster's "dolls," were. But if she was breathing-

"Clark!" she yelled, hope seizing her. If Tom was still alive then-

"Lois?" He was there, staring at the room in horrified fascination.

"She's breathing, she's still breathing-"

Once again Clark looked at the girl over the rim of his glasses, his brows knit as if he was looking into her soul. Lois wanted to shake him, order him to pick this child up and bring her downstairs, try some of his old farm tricks. _Where there's life there's hope, _she thought desperately, needing this to come right, to come well. Why should she and Clark be the only people untouched by this, not shot or tortured or-

"She's gone Lois."

"What?" she stared at him, her eyes wide. How could he know that? How could he-

"Feel how cold she is," he said gently, and it was only now that she realised he was holding the girl's hand. "He freezes them, remember? The deep tissue damage is far too extensive."

"But she's breathing-"

"Right now yes. But the cold is the only thing that's keeping her alive. If we warm her up, she'll just die more quickly." He shook his head, and just for a second she saw the ghost of his anger in the cellar, faint and unreal. "She's gone."

They sat like that for a long moment, neither speaking. After maybe 30 seconds he stood up, mumbling something about Bethany. Lois nodded numbly, only half registering what he'd said.

She'd failed. They'd failed.

The sound of the paramedics barely even jarred her. They rushed into the room, firing questions she couldn't answer. She didn't remember rising and leaving, giving them room to do their job, but she must have. The next thing she could really remember was sitting on the porch, a blanket around her shoulders while she watched Bethany Holmes being loaded into an ambulance. Their eyes met and Holmes nodded, one fighter to another. Lois merely nodded back. It felt strange to have sunlight on her face.

Clark sat down beside her.

"If Superman had been here-" he began.

"He couldn't have done anything you didn't." She was stating a fact, of that she was sure.

"He was going to…make an appearance, but I decided he would get too much attention. Might tip Derricks off." Lois shook her head, unable to imagine Clark deciding for his friend. But then maybe Superman had understood that Clark had needed to do this for himself. She remembered his words as if from centuries ago: _"Finally Lois, there'll be a reason I'M here." _

Silence.

"I thought Holmes was you." The tone of his voice, halfway between accusation and confession, jarred her. "She was wearing your coat," he continued after a moment. "In the dark, she was wearing your coat. It had your smell, your…feel." He squeezed the bridge of his nose, his other hand covering his mouth. "My eyes never play tricks, but down there…Down there, just for a second, I thought it was you who'd been shot. I thought it was-"

She pulled him suddenly into an embrace, so hard she thought she might crack a couple of ribs, her arms winding up his back, his hair catching in her fingers. The stress and pain of these last few weeks, of these last few hours, was bursting free, and she felt like she might break apart if she didn't hold onto him. He was there, he was warm and real and alive in her arms, when she'd thought just hours before that he was gone forever. That she'd lost him. She could have slipped into quiet, sorrowing oblivion, slowly freezing like one of those kids; the thought of it terrified her.

_I'm not a go gentle into that good night kind of a gal_, she told herself, _And yet…How can he make me fierce and frozen at the same time?_

As often before that day, Lois was happy not to be able to answer her own questions.

They stayed there for who knew how long, before a polite cough called them back to earth. Scottie Domidenko was smiling wanly, holding out his hand to help Lois up. "We can take your statement later Lois," he said kindly, his icy blue eyes soft amid his creased, slightly weathered face. "You too, Mr. Kent. How about we let an officer drive you two home?"

Any other day Lois would have argued, and then probably gone into work and wrote up everything that happened, but not today. _Not today. _The two reporters nodded, and got into the cop car. They were halfway down 49th Street before Lois realised that they were holding hands.

_When the hell did that happen?_

But happen it had, her smaller hand in his large one as they silently watched the buildings go by. She could feel the tenseness in his fingers, stiff and controlled, trying to push his stress out from inside him, trying to keep intact, probably for her. She clasped his hand but he didn't squeeze back. She remembered Lana, and what he'd said about hurting people. She remembered his reaction to Derricks. She ran her thumb along the inside of the palm she had clasped so lightly, trying to sooth him, marvelling at the softness of hands which had apparently kept a farm going for most of his life. _It's okay Clark_, she wanted to say. _It's okay to touch me_. But she didn't, too tired and wise to try.

She was rewarded when he brushed his own thumb over her knuckles and down her index finger, trying to show he noticed and understood. It was enough for Lois. _Yup, _she thought. _We should definitely stick with the non-verbal communication._

They got to Clark's apartment first, and ignoring the near-protests of the officer and the lease-holder, she wordlessly got out and headed for his place. He didn't argue, didn't even ask for an explanation, just pushed his door open wordlessly. She'd been there before and knew her way around: without any explanation she headed straight for the bedroom, her heels clicking oddly in the stillness of the morning. She lay down (still in her two day old clothes) on the bed, facing the door, tucking her feet in underneath her, closing her eyes tightly. She only realised he'd come in when she felt a hand remove her shoes, a thumb brushing against her right sole. She felt the bed lift slowly with his weight.

He was facing her when she opened her eyes.

"Hey," she said softly.

"Hey."

She closed her eyes again, relieved to feel his forehead pressed against hers, his nose and the edge of his glasses digging into her eyebrow and forehead. He took her hand and clasped it against his chest, the warmth seeping into her fingers. She remembered the Chief doing that the few times she'd seen him and his wife slow-dancing at The Planet's parties. It felt almost like they were slow-dancing too, floating in thin air as she once had long ago. But this didn't feel unreal, it was too hurt and messy and painful and good for that.

"Your fingers are cold."

"So are yours, Kansas." She felt him smile at his nickname, the one she hadn't used for what felt like an eternity.

The silence stretched out, filling the room with quiet, with peace.

"So this is what it feels like to both lost and found," he said softly. Lois nodded, letting her own hand rest against his belly, feeling his hand come to rest on her hip. They were comfortable; they fit.

And so finally, in the quiet light of morning, Lois and Clark slept.

A/N I just want to say thank you to everyone who's reviewed, particularly NiteAngel, Estetson, Mistressbabette, Yeah, Erin, cenzo, jj, puddin' tame, Shelby Kent, annabelleaurius, Indy Pollard, Red Lightning and Speakfire. I'm sooooooo sorry for ending the last chapter where I did, I didn't mean to cause so much trauma:-P Hopefully this one will make up for my earlier naughtiness. And chapter nine's been re-posted, with more interaction between Lois and Derricks, if you're interested… Not sick any more so will try to post soon! Cheers!


	11. Chapter 11

_Disclaimer_: This story is not written for profit and is not intended as an infringement of copyright.

**CHAPTER 11**

_I wished for so long that this story ended right here, in that bed, with me and him pressed against each other and ready to take on the world. I wished so hard for it that there were times when it seemed it was all my life was really about. A man and a woman lying together, so wrapped up in each other that the outside world didn't even seem to matter. But it did. The outside world never ceases to matter; hide from it as much as you like, it'll get you in the end. It came for us, and it still hurts to remember that we didn't, couldn't send it on its merry way. _

_This part of the story is hard for me, you get that?_

_Screaming at Superman and talking back to a serial killer and finding that poor kid half alive I can do, but describing that morning, when we finally woke up (in more ways than one) still aches. Like all the most important wounds it's a scar that's never really healed, and I sometimes used to wonder if it ever would. If it ever really should. It's infuriating to want to cast something off and hold it close at the same time. But then anyone who's ever loved will understand that._

_Maybe I don't want it to heal, because the scar is all I have left. _

_This part of the story is difficult for me, like I said. I suppose on some level I'm afraid of it, afraid of going through it again. Don't get me wrong: I survived it, but it's still a scar, and if I'm being honest (and I'm trying to be honest) then it still bleeds, just a little bit. Maybe more now than it used to, since he came back. I let it bleed, because I'm afraid that if i try to supress it then i'll go back to living in it, to being about the wound. And there is nobody on earth I would willingly do that for, not Clark, not Superman, not even Richard. I will not be a victim. I will not be defined by pain. _

_But the wound is still there, still part of who I am now. **This story **is part of who I am now. So if I tell you that I tried, that I really did, to make things come right, please believe me. It was Clark who walked away, not me. Clark who broke something I thought couldn't ever break. Clark who made up his mind, and when that man makes up his mind nothing can change it._

_It used to make me laugh sometimes: people always think **I'm** the stubborn one. _

_This story started with a girl. But the girl wasn't me, wasn't Holmes, wasn't even Sookie Tom or any of the other absolute beginners Derricks stole away in the night. This story was always about Lana Lang. _

_I just didn't realise it at the time. When I tell you the rest you'll finally get what I mean._

_And if I do the girl thing, and cry a little bit remembering it? Go easy on me. I got over this, I got through it, but that doesn't mean that I don't feel it any more, happy as I am with my life, with my choices. I'll tell you the truth, and gladly, but remember boys and girls: the truth won't always set you free._

_Clark Kent taught me that._

She was warm.

Warm and comfortable and heavy and relaxed, her mind floating in that free, fuzzy state between dreaming and waking. Her body was stiff, and hurting, and wounded, but her brain and her heart were open for the first time that she could remember in so long. She felt whole and alive and wanted, wanted, wanted. The weight of another body pressing her down into the bed more thoroughly than the weight of yesterday's memories ever could.

Elbows and hair, and skin. A smile she didn't see nearly often enough. Light and heat and the world far, far away.

Lois slowly opened her eyes.

He was lying across her, his elbow digging into her side. He was still asleep, the glasses miraculously still perched on his nose; his chest was rising and falling in its own waltzing rhythm. Lois didn't often do this, but she closed her eyes and thanked whatever force ran the universe (if there even was one) that this moment existed, for however long it would last. Because this, she was sure, was one of the only examples of peace she would ever encounter.

"Lois?"

He looked up at her blearily, and Lois felt her face quicken in a smile. When they'd crawled into bed they'd been comfortable and ordered; now they were tangled up in one another, knotted together in ways she was surprised her body could manage given what it had been through yesterday. For a moment he looked really confused, as if he couldn't work out how she'd gotten there, and she felt her smile widen.

She leaned over him, pinning him, ignoring protesting muscles and the echo of guilt from yesterday, that she could still be alive and feel joy. It didn't matter, truly nothing mattered except the here and now and the two of them pressed together like this.

Clark stared up at her, his eyes beginning to focus; he looked liked he was happy and confused at the same time. He suddenly realised his shirt was open and he gave a startled little yelp, jerking her in the bed. _Skin on skin, warm and soft and oh but this was home_. He looked slightly embarrassed but she just smiled some more, letting her hair fall forward like a veil, hiding them both from the world.

Why on earth had she ever thought of getting it cut?

"Hey you," he said eventually, looking straight up at her, his fingers lightly gripping her wrists. He looked nervous, unsure, happy. He looked like Clark.

"Hey yourself." She smiled to herself at the possibility in this: here there was choice and joy and the room to play. Room to not be afraid. And oh God, Lois would like to not be afraid.

"We survived," he said softly, though she could tell he wasn't just talking about the storm cellar.

"Seems so." He suddenly seemed very far away, and she leaned down for him, eyes closed. She felt his hand travelling up her back, giving reassurance. She smiled ruefully as she felt the blooming bruises under his hands and he frowned questioningly. "What can I say, Kansas? My body isn't very happy with me right now."

His eyes seemed to widen in panic. "You're hurt? How could you be hurt?" He began to sit up, threatening to dislodge her from her (very comfortable) perch. "What happened-?"

She knew he was only being kind but it wasn't like she was some delicate little flower. She rolled her eyes, her smile growing wider. "Clark, I fell down a flight of stairs yesterday, had the guy trying to capture me land _on top of me_, and then cunningly talked him into giving me a break for freedom by beating me up. Of course I'm hurt." He stopped suddenly, looking unaccountably… relieved. And then sick that he looked relieved. "_You're_ not the one who hurt me Clark," she said quietly, remembering Lana. "And I'm not made of glass." She felt the tension begin to build between them like a wall and she knew she would have to dissipate it before it could solidify.

She couldn't bear to let go of…_this_.

"You should see some of my other scars," she continued, trying to sound matter-of-fact, to drag the conversation back onto terra firma, so to speak. "The last time I had trouble with my ribs Old Man Giacommetti and his boys had thrown me out of their club on 9th and Vinewood for snooping, and it took _forever_ for that to heal." He still looked unsure, of himself, of her. "C'mon Clark!" she said, trying not to hear the touch of desperation enter her voice. "My face looks like a map of Nebraska! This can't be a surpri-"

He pulled her down to him and kissed her, stopping her breath and her words. _Man, she liked that._

"You look beautiful." She was reminded of that night in her apartment; he sounded like he was making a vow. "You always look beautiful."

Lois wasn't really used to those kind of compliments, she'd learned from an early age to distrust them. The only man who'd ever valued her for her beauty had left her and Lucy, and it had hurt for so long to realise that he was never coming back.

She really didn't want to think about her dad right now.

"Why Clark Kent, you charmer," she laughed instead, trying to brush it off, to make this into a joke. Suddenly the expectation of what he'd said was making her feel trapped.

He just held her gaze, cupping her face with his hands. He got her reaction, she realised, unsure whether that made her happy or scared or both.

Silence.

She fought the urge, suddenly, to fidget. She knew that things were going to get uncomfortable, that things were going to have to be said now. She knew that it was necessary and probably not nearly as scary as it sounded. But that wouldn't make it any easier. The wounds painted underneath the skin might be shadows, but they could burn into the living nonetheless. And yet she would have to do it.

She took a deep breath. _Here goes nothing._

"Clark, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that morning in my apartment. I'm sorry I behaved the way I did." He hadn't let her go, his thumbs moving along her law line, along her cheeks bones. He could anchor her through this, he seemed to understand it. "I was scared, and I nearly let you walk away."

He shook his head firmly. "Lois, you shouldn't be the one to say this. I'm the one who acted like a jackass." His lips twitched, maybe remembering the last time he'd called himself by that name. "To say I handled the situation badly might be an understatement." Again, the slight twist of a smile. "It might be a _very big _understatement." He stared up at her, seeming to gather his thoughts. This was the moment of truth, she realised: she was suddenly very aware that the position she'd adopted, from the moment they left Derricks' place, had supposed an outcome which might not be heading her way. There was no _platonic_ way you could crawl into bed with your partner and then straddle him the next morning.

Oh God, what if she'd completely misjudged things? What if-

"I don't so well with change, Lois," he said haltingly, trying she could tell to keep his voice even. "I often find it easier to back away than go into the unknown, at least when it comes to people." They had that in common, she realised. Another pause. "And also, as you may have noticed, I'm an idiot."

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then despite herself Lois burst out laughing. The tension, fear and worry began pouring out of her, the sound echoing through the apartment. It took a moment but then Clark joined her, his own voice mixing with hers. They began to jostle, and tickle, and wrestle together, the joy of movement, the freedom of it suddenly bursting out-

_Knots, knots, they were one human knot, tied together. Unable and unwilling to be separated for anything. _

"So are we in trouble now?" she asked eventually, when the laughter had finally abated. She hated how small her voice sounded, despite everything. He smiled, his reassuring Clark-smile which was usually followed by his tie falling into his coffee, or a trip to the floor.

"Trouble? You're worried about trouble? I've been in trouble since the moment I met you." He was still smiling, oh thank God he was still smiling, his glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose.

"Why were you in trouble?"

Now it was his turn to look uncomfortable. This must be serious, she thought to herself. She was suddenly very aware that she would have to handle this right, because he looked so damn grave. The urge to take back control, the urge to run was beginning to regain ground. But she wouldn't do it, she thought sternly. She wouldn't run away. She reached down, brushing her nose and fingers against his jaw, reaching in to kiss him, trying to reassure. He looked away, pushing his glasses back into place.

"Clark, please don't pull away." Another pause. _Spit it out Lane_. "I get why you're nervous, really I do. I… I should've stayed and tried to get you to talk and I didn't. But I'm trying now." She was staring at his collar bone, suddenly fascinated by the push of bone against skin, and unable to look up. She began slowly tracing a figure of eight against his chest, fighting desperately against the wave of fear which had suddenly seized her. The motion of her finger became quicker and quicker as she felt her discomfort mount. "I should've pushed," she continued, nerves nearly taking over. "I'm the one who pushes." A pause. "I know I'm always trouble."

It sounded more like a confession than an apology.

He sighed. "One person can't always push in a relationship, Lois," he said tiredly. "That's not fair on anyone." He twined their fingers together, bringing them to rest on his chest. "And you are not the trouble, not in the way I mean."

"Then what _do_ you mean?" she asked him quizzically.

He looked as she though she had done a few seconds ago, uncomfortable and really, really unwilling to answer her. But he knew he would have to if he wanted this to work. And despite everything, as she read that on his face she felt her heart swell a little bit, that he was willing to try.

"Things were supposed to be simple," he said eventually, his voice seeming to echo strangely through the room. "I came here to help. I was supposed to be invisible, I was supposed to be someone you'd never notice." He shifted them, so that they were lying side by side. Lois felt a small lurch of disappointment, but he pulled her closer, his forehead resting once again with hers, his hands at her cheeks, her ear. She felt so warm. She almost felt safe. "I'm not supposed to influence history, I'm not supposed to interfere unless it's to help." A pause. "It's never supposed to be about me."

She frowned, wondering where he'd gotten a cockamamie idea like that from. Maybe his folks were religious zealots or something.

"And what happens my first day at work?" he continued, his voice getting faster, less confident. "I meet the single most amazing woman I've ever seen, and suddenly… Suddenly I don't want to be invisible. Suddenly, there's one person in all the world I want to see me."

_He thought that about **her**_?

"And all my good intentions go out the window. All my noble aspirations about the greater good become pointless, because no matter what I do, deep down I keep hoping that she'll see me, that she'll look at me." He shook his head, his voice was getting faster, more urgent. "I know I should just leave her, let her get on with her life, but I can't." Suddenly he opened his eyes, his gaze boring into hers. "I'm a selfish person Lois: deep down I know I am." He laughed mirthlessly. "I can't let you go. And I never should have let the things that have happened to you happen."

She shook her head. _Most men don't care enough and this one cares too much. _"You seem awfully obsessed with the verb "to let," Kansas." _Okay, maybe should have put that one better_. But she knew what to say to this, she knew how to handle it. It seemed so ridiculous, that he felt guilty about wanting someone who wanted him. Everyone deserved to be loved. "Clark, we've had this conversation. The world is not something you can control. And it's not something you should feel guilty about being unable to control either. It is what it is." Another pause. "Why do you think nobody should notice you?"

"Because I'm a means to an end, because other people should always come first-"

"Clark, you're a good man. You deserve some happiness. You're not bad, nothing about you is bad. Why do you keep acting like you are?"

"I've brought pain, destruction, hurt. I've hurt you, hurt everyone-"

"Have I never hurt you?"

Well his silence answered that question. _Time to go for broke_. "Down there, in the storm-cellar with Derricks, I realised something really important." Where had her voice gone, now that she needed it the most? "He was going to kill me, Clark. He kept putting his fingers against my throat like he wanted to squeeze." He turned sharply to look at her, horrified. "And the only thing I could think about, was how I wanted to see _Clark Kent_ again. How I wanted to fight for him, because I'd finally gotten my head out of my ass and realised what he meant to me." She said it in a rush, afraid if she stopped for a second she'd chicken out. She wished he'd squeeze her back, as hard as she was squeezing him; it would have been reassuring. But that didn't seem to be something he felt comfortable doing. She laced her right hand into his, their hands resting between them. "Do you think I did all that for someone who doesn't deserve to be seen? To be…loved?"

"But it's going to be complicated," he muttered tightly. "I'm going to make you cry-"

"And I'm gonna hurt you too. But it's my choice, Clark. _And I choose you_."

_Way to go Lois, very subtle._

He said nothing, but his tenseness seemed to ease just a little. It was a small start, but a start nonetheless. Through the window beside them she could see the sky above Metropolis, slit and slashed with orange and purple. Darkness would be falling soon. He seemed to be mulling what she'd said over in his head, brooding almost on it. Despite herself she let out a small sigh, wishing she could just damn convince him. And then she smiled wanly to herself, berating her lack of patience. He was patient with her: least she could do was be patient back.

She heard it in the gathering darkness. "Thank you, Lois. For saying that."

"Hey, telling nasty home truths is all part of the service."

"I noticed," he dead-panned. Funny how he never used to be comfortable enough to that around her. She shifted in the bed, trying to get closer to him, and felt her aching body protest. She hadn't meant to hiss in pain, but now that those industrial strength pain killers the paramedics had given her were wearing off she was beginning to feel just how much punishment she'd taken the day before. And loath as she was to admit it or move, tying herself into knots with her partner probably hadn't helped.

_But it had still been worth it_, she had to grin.

"What is it?" He had pushed himself up on one elbow and was peering down at her curiously.

"The painkillers are starting to wear off." No use pretending it was anything else; and besides, lying would just make him paranoid. If he was interested in sticking around then this scenario would soon become commonplace for him. She really pissed a lot of people of in the course of her work: She had a gift.

The falling darkness seemed to make him more comfortable around her. "Where is it worst?" he asked softly.

"Everywhere," she answered ruefully. Without really thinking about it she began unbuttoning her shirt (which was probably just as well: after three days it stank) and peeled it off. She held her arms up, ready for inspection, wincing at the motion. She could see the dark bruises along her arms and mottled across her chest. She suppressed a tinge of fear, the vulnerability of showing herself hurt making her suddenly fearful, and yet she needed him to see. This isn't a beauty pageant, Lane, she told herself. And surely he won't care?

_Please don't let him care_.

He ran his fingers over her arms, looking obviously for where was worst. She hunched over, trying to show him her back, trying not to be overwhelmed with the anger which always rose in her when she contemplated her own physical fragility. She always felt alone when she was hurt, which meant she'd felt alone for the best part of 20 years. But she wasn't alone in this: the hands running over her skin could remind her that she wasn't alone now. His fingers travelled along her shoulder blades, and she felt the sharpest flash of pain yet. She'd landed on her right side when Derricks knocked her chair over that final time, and the weight and force of the blow, coupled with the lack of fat or muscle to cushion it, had made this a flash-point of hurt. She heard his indrawn breath and realised she'd been right. "Will I ever play the trombone again?" she asked quietly, trying to break the sudden tension.

"We need ice." Within seconds he'd jumped out of the bed, made for the kitchen. She felt a flash of fear at his absence, at the thought of coldness coming into their room, their bed. Their moment. But within a second he was back, an ice-pack in one hand. She suppressed her own relief and instead cocked her eyebrow at him. He shrugged. "Best I could do." He began pulling the covers down. "Could you lie on your stomach? And I'll try to take the bruising down."

She did as she was told, but the atmosphere which had sustained her so far, the stillness and warmth of the room, was broken. And she couldn't see what he was doing. Lois hated not being able to see what was about to happen to her, what was going on. The thought of it drove her crazy, always had. If he walked away she wouldn't be able to see him do it until it was too late.

_Now that was a telling thought._

She felt the icy coldness land on her back and just for a moment she winced.

"Lois, I'm not going to hurt you."

"I didn't say you were." She'd meant to bite back the annoyance in her voice and hadn't. Suddenly she was tense as a board. She hated not being able to see. The relief of the cold compress against the bruise was nothing next to the discomfort her position was causing her. She really would have rather lay there bruised next to him, able to see, than be healed in the dark.

"Lois, relax."

She merely nodded mutely, looking anything but.

"Lois, you're safe with me."

Her tenseness became worse.

He sighed, taking a deep breath, apparently steeling himself. "Lois," he said quietly, "Lois, _you're safe with me_."

"Bullshit." The word was out of her mouth before she even realised what she was saying.

She saw the look of hurt flash across his face, and immediately the urge to cry came back. He thought she'd said it because of what had happened that night at her apartment. How could she explain that it wasn't about him really? How could she sit him down and tell him that the fearless and proud woman he knew and respected thought trust for someone you love was a concept as fantastical as believing in fairies? How could she begin to explain when and how and why she'd stopped believing in the possibility of being _safe_? That the word, that the concept, was the one thing that terrified her because it was the one thing she knew she craved more than anything else. And it was the one thing which she'd known was impossible, from the time she was nine years old. From the time of the first bruises, the ones which hadn't bloomed on her skin. _Safe? Safe!? He thought that she could be safe?_ Lois suddenly wanted to scream, to yell and shout. She wanted to squeeze her heart until it gave in, squeeze the world until it gave in and let her have some peace.

"Lois, I-"

She grabbed him suddenly, the ice forgotten, and wound her arms and legs fiercely about him, cupping his head in her hands, needing him to anchor her. For a second he frowned, startled and uncomprehending, and she felt a flash of fear that she'd disgusted him with her behaviour. She wasn't being soft or sweet or gentle, he would have to see what she really was…

He didn't squeeze her back, and she felt panic beginning to rise.

Instead he reversed their positions, so now he was on top. His weight seemed strangely reassuring. He put his forehead against hers, his breath gasping in time with hers, and waited for her to stop struggling.

He said it again, his hands cupping her face as hers cupped his. "Lois, you're safe with me."

"No I'm not!" she yelled, hating how petulant it sounded, like child who didn't want to go to school. "There's no such thing as safe. The concept does not exist, Clark!" She closed her eyes, let her voice drop. "Nothing is ever safe! Everything is a goddamn risk! The people you love judge you and hate you and leave and lie, and there's no such goddamn thing as safe!"

But even as she said it she pulled him more tightly to her. If he'd pushed her away she felt like she really would break. He didn't say it again, just held on, matching her rocking motions with his own, her breathing with his own. If this bed, if his body, were the universe, then for the first time Lois and the universe were moving together. Moving for one another.

_And I thought I'd get my equilibrium back when we were done fighting. But he can still make my emotions turn on the head of a dime. Figures._

"I don't believe in safe, Clark," she said eventually, her voice tiny and tired, their bodies finally coming to rest.

"I know that now." She turned to look at him, wondering whether he was laughing at her, but the large blue eyes seemed as kind, as understanding as ever.

_Was his body an anchor or a cage? How could she possibly know?_

He waited, waited until she seemed to have calmed completely, and then brushed her hair back off her face, searching it. He sighed. "Lois, I do believe in safe. I have to. Because the thought that you're not safe, is probably enough to drive me completely crazy."

_He thought she was safe? He thought she was safe for him? Oh no, Clark, _she wanted to wail, _Please don't start thinking that! Please don't ask me to be safe for you. I'm never safe: I've no idea how to do it. I'll screw it up, you know I will._

"Down there in the storm cellar," he continued, his voice soft in the near darkness, "I thought he'd shot you." He did pull her closer this time, squeezing her slightly, though Lois could feel that he was holding something back. He was always holding something back. "You shot, and me not able to save you, is probably my worst nightmare." Now he sounded lost, and she nodded numbly, realizing he was trying to say something with his words that had little to do with the words he was using. He nuzzled her cheek, his fingers feeling her pulse pound. _This is hard, this is so very, very hard_, she thought to herself.

_But doesn't that make it more worthwhile too?_

"So you see, Lois: I need to believe in safe. It's probably the key to my sanity."

So many things she could say, enough words to fill a library. She didn't use any of them. But she could try, she could show him she understood. That she wasn't the crazy woman in the attic. She could try to do _safe_ for him, even though she didn't know how.

"If you're gonna stick with me, Kansas," she sniffed, "Then I'd kiss my sanity goodbye."

There was so much more to the joke than its words, she knew. Apparently so did he. He kissed her, a small gesture amid the big loud words of the last few minutes. And yet the most elegant and eloquent by far. "Goodbye sanity," he said softly, smiling in the dark.

She felt the atmosphere between them shift, felt tension that had little to do with their recent peril or making their relationship work, begin to steal into the room. She had a good grip on him, she could feel flesh and muscle (very nice flesh and muscle, she knew) beneath her hands. She felt his smile more than saw it, knew where his mind was going as surely as she knew where hers already was. They could test out safe; they could build it with hands and breath and the nonsense that isn't nonsense lovers whisper in the dark. She was willing to try, if he was. He buried his face in her neck and she felt his smile widen, felt his breathing. She began circling his back with her hands, her own soreness forgotten. She rolled him so she was on top again, hearing the amusement in his voice, knowing he was biting back a joke about bossiness in bed. She held her arms up to the ceiling, the gesture now joyous, triumphant. They were alive, and they should enjoy it: enough people had been hurt without them taking their survival for granted. He sat up, shifting her slightly, long fingers splayed across her ribs. He kissed her elbow, where a bruise the size of his palm had spread. Then her shoulder, where the splotches of blue and purple looked like another gunshot wound in the dim light. He kissed her neck, where Derricks had tried to stop her voice, her words. He kissed the tip of her nose, which thank Christ had not had to be set, and she laughed. She kissed him back, wrestling and laughing, fair skin against fair skin, made opalescent in the light of the rising moon. Knots, they were knots, tied to one another by one another, and if this was safety then she could try to believe in it. Oh God she could try. She could get lost in safety like this.

And suddenly it stopped.

He stopped moving against her, ceased moving full stop.

He was staring fixedly, riveted, at a point on her hip, just above the waist band of her skirt. He was staring at one of her many, many bruises. And he looked like he was going to be sick.

Slowly, haltingly, he laid his fingers upon the bruise, twisting his hand slightly awkwardly to do so. Lois frowned, looking down, trying to see on her own body what he apparently did.

The pattern of the bruise on her hip and the pattern of his fingers matched.

She flashed back to that moment, as they got comfortable enough to sleep, when she'd curled her free hand against his stomach and his had gone to her waist.

He must have done it in his sleep.

She didn't mind, she knew how easy it was to develop a bruise, and of all her bruises this was one she'd gladly put up with. He must have been having nightmares, maybe dreaming about missing school-girls and shot-guns and someone else wearing Lois' coat. It was understandable, it wasn't the end of the world.

It wasn't like he'd done it on purpose.

He looked up at her, his face a mask, and Lois felt the bottom drop out of her world.

_Don't you dare._

_Don't you dare blame yourself for this_.

He shook his head at her, though whether he was telling her not to talk, or asking her not to move, she couldn't be sure. She knew where his mind was going.

_I'm not Lana Lang! _she wanted to yell. _I'm Lois, don't you get that? Lois, who knows karate and falls out of helicopters and just spent the last three days trying to tell you how she feels! Us girls, we're not interchangeable. It's not a case of one definition fits all. _What she said was, "Clark..?"

He wouldn't look at her. Her heart began to crack in her chest.

_This is different. We're different. I'm not a school-girl you'll break. _She wanted to say it but suddenly the words wouldn't come out. And suddenly she wasn't so sure about him not breaking her.

"Lois," he said, his voice deathly serious. She was back in her apartment, and he was staring at her from that chair, wearing his three piece suit. "Lois, get off me." He physically picked her up and deposited her on the bed beside him, making as little skin-on-skin contact with her as he could. Making her feel like she was contaminated.

"Clark-" she began, hating how small, how scared her voice sounded there in the dark. "Clark, it's just a bruise-"

"It's never just a bruise-"

"It is to me!"

"Not to me."

"Isn't this about _my_ body, Kansas?" She was losing him again, she could feel it, and the knowledge made her fierce. He always made her fierce. "Isn't this my choice?" she asked, hearing the panic in her tone, the desperation. _Don't do this, oh please don't do this_. She wanted Clark back, not this stranger who touched her like she was a hothouse flower, a frail _beautiful_ piece of glass. She wanted Clark, who tripped over things and made her feel so wonderfully, safely mortal. She wanted Clark, and tried, clumsily, to regain her post, her hands reaching for him again.

He wouldn't even look at her, his eyes were screwed shut.

"Look at me!" she snapped, trying to grab his hands, trying to force him to make some contact. "I wasn't too disgusting to look at five seconds ago!"

"This isn't about you," he all but yelled. He looked like a ghost, and she remembered the look on his face that first time he'd seen Crystal Tappert. He'd seen the ghost of Christmas past that day… Was that all she was to him too? A ghost?

A mistake?

"If it isn't about me then who is it about?" she asked coldly, the fury of her own hurt again beginning to build. "Who else should it be about?"

"Isn't sex about two people?" he snapped, apparently (finally) nettled. "Isn't that what love's about?"

"Is this what you call love?" She could hear her own voice rising to match his, her fury beginning to take over. "Fear and panic and never wanting to change?" She thought of Derricks, of his crusade with those poor girls. Never wanting them to change, taking away their choice. Never letting them grow up. Was that what Clark wanted? To stop their relationship, to freeze it? To make her into a statue, impossible to bruise because she was never touched? He didn't answer, his face buried in his hands. On some level she realised that this was difficult for him, but she couldn't comprehend how. Lois wanted him, he wanted her. How on earth could that become complicated? "This _is_ about two people," she tried, forcing her voice calm, trying not to register how panicked it sounded. "The two people right here." Still he wouldn't look at her. "Things change, Clark," she said quietly, brokenly. "That's what life's about. Bodies and minds, everything changes. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

He looked straight at her. "I don't change."

"What?" She didn't understand, for all the simplicity of his words.

"I don't change. I'm not like you, I never will be." He looked so sad that if she hadn't wanted to strangle him she might have kissed him instead. "I won't allow you to be hurt because of me."

"What do you think you're doing right now?" Her throat hurt from the effort of not sobbing, and she felt her anger and sorrow crashing together, squeezing her heart like a fist inside her chest. "Why are you doing this? Don't you trust me Clark?"

"Of course I do!"

"Then why don't you trust me to make this decision for myself?"

"It's not only your decision."

"And it's not only yours." Her eyes searched his face, and though she hated herself for it, she could feel that they were pleading. "You trust me to drive, to work, to vote. Why won't you trust me to make this decision too?"

He put his hands on her shoulders for a moment. It looked like he wanted to tell her something. He cocked his head back, the eyes squeezed shut, and made a movement as he once had before, towards his glasses. She waited, wondering what on earth removing his spectacles could do to explain this situation, because Lois felt that she'd wandered into another dimension without realising it. "Lois, I-"

"What is it, Clark?" she asked, cupping his face in her hands, trying desperately to understand how she'd gotten to this place, this moment. How she'd gotten somewhere which matched so closely _her_ definition of safe, somewhere full of shifting meanings and traps that looked like people you loved.

The traffic whispered, the sky turned inky black and mocked her.

At the last minute he seemed to change his mind. He pulled her head towards his and kissed her forehead, the imprint of his mouth burning into her skin. "Telling you won't help," he murmured more to himself than to her. He pulled away, and stood up. Lois looked up at him, as she had once looked up at another man who was interested in beauty and safety, and who had left her without ever coming back.

_Oh how she would hate herself later for saying this. _"You said I was safe with you." Her voice sounded almost child-like. "You said I was safe." She knew she sounded deadened, shell-shocked. She knew it wouldn't work, it never did. But she said it nonetheless.

He smiled sadly. "You will be safe, Lois. I promise."

Her laugh was mirthless, heart-wrung. "I understand about your promises, Clark." She picked up her stinking shirt and pulled it on, all the energy suddenly gone out of her. Now his eyes followed her, now he looked at her. Now when it was too late. "Be safe Clark," she said "If it means that much to you." And then she left, as she'd left only a few days before. If she cried in the cab home, if she cried as she stood underneath the shower trying to wash the filth of Derricks and his horrors off her, then she didn't acknowledge it to herself. She curled up in her bed, all alone, and sat with the light on, replaying the night's events over and over in her mind. She didn't turn out her light, even when dawn came.

Turned out, Lois didn't like the dark so much anymore. Go figure.

_A week later he was gone, and I was safe. _

_You buyin' that? _

_Nope, me neither._

A/N No, this isn't the end. Though I'm sorry if I bummed people out. There's more from this twisted little tale. But may I ask a favour? This was a mother to write, and I'm still unsure of how successful it was. Any and all feed-back would be gratefully appreciated, and if I have to I'll monkey about with it some more. And thank you, as always, to everyone wh has reviewed (and read): you lads rock.


	12. Chapter 12

_Disclaimer:_ this fanfiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended

**IN THE DARK**

CHAPTER TWELVE

_Safe. _

_Say it with me: safe. _

_A small single-syllable word that's been responsible for so much in my life. A small, guttural Anglo-Saxon noun that has managed to terrify me more than serial killers, terrorists, bank robbers, drug dealers, and bald psychopaths ever could._

_He hit a nerve, you see. Hit a nerve I didn't even realise was still raw until that night. Everything would have been fine if he hadn't used the word "safe." He was trying, I think, to make this thing between us tame and knowable, a fire that could keep you warm, not one that would burn down your house. But for me, for someone who works with words every day, who talks and writes and thinks using nothing but words, that one small word was a huge problem. I was afraid of it, and my fear made me hate it. When your universe is made of nothing but words, then they have a power over you that they shouldn't have. Words seem to be all that's real; they seem to be reality itself when really they're just a tool for describing it. _

_They seem to be concrete and whole and very, very frightening. And that word did frighten me, once upon a time._

_A wise woman once said that people have a need to confess their sins, a need to tell their secrets. And she (whoever she was, because I can't recall a name) was perfectly right. Saying things out loud, describing them like I am here, makes them less scary because it makes them knowable, makes them tame. It's the thing I always distrusted about narrative when I was younger: I always knew it was a tricky proposition, more about what the person speaking feels and needs than about the truth of the situation. I always knew that narrative was flawed, that it helped make things knowable and palatable. Made things easier. And the mighty Lois Lane never does things the easy way. At least I never used to. I always felt like something wasn't worthwhile unless I got it the hard way. Sometimes I wonder how many of the mistakes I've made were down to that egotistical bit of logic, were down to my need to go toe to toe with the universe and see who'd come out on top. I know that's how I got to where I am professionally: Mad Dog Lane became the best as much through will as talent. But when it came down to dealing with Clark then this need, this chip I had on my shoulder, really did screw things up. I can see that now. If I hadn't felt so raw, so scared, I would have handled everything else better, I know I would have. I wouldn't have retreated into numbness, into being frozen. I would have talked him through things, would have been patient, would have forced myself to be patient. But I was hurt and panicked, and I didn't fight when he pushed me away. Because I hadn't felt safe, exactly, but I had wanted to. I had wanted to be safe with Clark, and that terrified me. It wasn't a grown woman who let him walk out that door, it was a nine year old kid, still caught in a trap of logic she'd worked out when another man she'd loved had abandoned her. Still trying to teach the universe who was boss, since it had screwed her over so royally. It's why I made the same mistakes over and over, why I continued for so long to behave in ways which hurt me even though I knew deep down that I was being stupid. More than anything else, I now believe that people want to stick with what they know. They know if they behave in a certain way then they'll get a certain outcome, and even if that outcome stinks they'll still follow it through to the bitter end. Because at least it's a familiar, knowable kind of stink. I still thought I could control this, I could force my will on the world. I still thought deep down that I could push, and make this come right. I can't decide whether it was blind egotism or blind faith._

_And of course, if everything was down to me, then if Clark left I could kid myself that it was my fault, my decision. I could delude myself that I was Boss of the Universe, and things had turned out the way I wanted._

_Isn't emotional logic fun? _

_When I walked out of his apartment that night I was numb, hurt. But the problem with believing that you're in charge of the universe is that you always think you'll get your way. You always tell yourself you'll turn things around. And I might have, if he hadn't taken matters into his own hands. If he hadn't disappeared into the great blue yonder then things would have been very different, I can promise you that. But it takes two people to truly screw up a relationship and we outdid ourselves. We went in opposite directions, both of us trying to do the same thing. Both of us trying to fix ourselves, and probably telling ourselves it was to fix the other person. So many supposedly good intentions. And you know what they say the road to Hell is paved with, don't you? I was so furious with Clark for so long not because I thought we were different, despite the yawning chasm I'd realised lay between us, but because I'd finally realised we were alike. We both wanted to keep things knowable and safe and controlled, just like telling you this story lets me make it knowable and safe and controlled. Makes it finally fit into my brain, into my mouth, into my heart. Finally lets me lay it to rest. _

_At least, that's the theory._

_And here's the kicker: I didn't think deep down that he'd leave._

_There, I said it. I know, it makes no sense: I was terrified that he'd leave and yet I didn't think he would. You gotta understand, there was a grown woman and a nine year old kid both looking at this situation. And while the kid might have had control of the heart-strings, it was the adult who had control of the brain. I thought I knew Clark; to be perfectly honest I thought he had more spine. So even when I got back to work after my three days mandatory rest (Perry's orders) and heard the news I didn't believe it. Clark couldn't, wouldn't leave. It was like telling me that I'd come to work one morning and find The Planet building gone. It was unthinkable. Nobody else was that surprised by his decision: everyone had seen how the Ice Sculptor case had gotten to him, and some of the more jealous (and frankly, less talented) members of staff even snickered about it, laughed about how the hick couldn't hack it here in the big city. They all knew that something had happened between us, but nobody had the balls to ask me and nobody actually thought they'd get it out of him. Most of them assumed he'd made a try and I'd shot him down: I mean, I was practically Superman's girlfriend as far as they were concerned. The idea that Kansas State and me were an item seemed ridiculous, which just shows you what keen, penetrating minds I was working with. _

_Everybody else could believe it except the one person who knew why he was going. _

_Looking back on it now, I know that I could have tried harder. It's why I'm still mad at him, still mad at myself. I had a week before he left and I did nothing, said nothing. Maybe I really didn't believe that he'd go. Or maybe that's a crock and I told myself I didn't believe it because then I wouldn't have to try again. Even now I'm not sure. But whichever it was, we just went through those last few days talking without really saying anything. If he stared at me sometimes, with that puppy-dog look I really wished I could loath, then I ignored it. Maybe I couldn't give up my hope, when I'd given up everything else in such a short space of time. But one thing I know: when he left I didn't think it would be nearly six years before I saw him again. And I certainly couldn't imagine that in that space of time I'd come to believe and accept that he was gone from my life forever. It's weird, I accepted Superman disappearing more easily, I think. Mainly because his going wasn't such a shock. _

_Not after everything we put each other through once Clark was gone. _

_Not after the gloves, and the cape, and what was left of my sanity, came off. _

_Safe and knowable went out the window with Superman, when they needed to be jettisoned with Clark. I was reacting, I was trying to take back control of my life._

_Because I'm the one in charge, remember? _

_And the person in charge, no matter how much she tells herself she's immune to the concept, is always "safe." That's why she puts herself up for the job._


	13. Chapter 13

_Disclaimer: _This fanfiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended

**IN THE DARK**

Chapter thirteen

It wasn't raining the day they put Sookie Tom in the ground. The grave-yard of Saint Anthony's Parish Church was warm and sunny, a riot of red and yellow leaves, as they lowered the coffin into the damp, living earth. Lois was there, with most of the bull-pen staff, to pay her respects. Holmes was there too, her shoulder bound up, her boyfriend holding her baby daughter.

Clark was there, his face sombre, set. It was his last day at The Planet and Perry had given him the morning off for the funeral. It seemed to Lois to be strangely appropriate.

He was only interested in the cold, the untouchable. He was only interested in a school girl with long red hair.

She couldn't look at him during the ceremony, even during the mass.

Once the oration was over, after Tom's little sister Melissa had sung "Ave Maria," at the grave-side and everyone had filed past the parents to mumble half-heard solicitations and prayers, they headed back to the office. Jimmy had bought a cake and some soft drinks, people were planning on a little get-together. Lois wanted to go about as much as she wanted to try her luck with Derricks for a second time, but she could hardly say that. She could hardly tell people "Well, actually no guys, I'd rather not bid Clark a fond farewell since he's broken my heart and left my without a shred of dignity or hope in the future left. But thanks for thinking of me and save me some cake, 'kay?" If she went, if she actually went along then she would have to endure some mortifying attempt at small talk, maybe even some kind of attempt at smoothing things over. She knew Clark, knew he had been too well brought up to not try to be a nice guy about this. To not try to fix it, as if it could ever be fixed. His obsession with being the good guy seemed to Lois to be the root of the problem: he couldn't seem to accept that people hurt you and you just had to get through it. That there was no way to survive life without being bruised. It would've been sweet if it wasn't so damn destructive. So no matter what people may have thought, Lois most certainly didn't want to go to the "party."

_And of course, she knew that she of all people would have to go, to make sure nobody got the wrong idea about why exactly he was leaving._

So they piled into cabs, headed back to the office. For a moment outside the church it looked like Clark was going to ask her to join him in his battered yellow cab, but she pointedly turned her back to him and got into a car with Jimmy instead.

She couldn't shake the feeling that she would come to regret that small act of pettiness, but she did it anyway. She was Lois Lane, untouchable and unhurt, after all.

The party was torture.

Everyone sat around ignoring Clark, who spent the entire time huddled with Jimmy in a corner. The two men, always such firm friends, looked awkward from where she was standing. She guessed that Jimmy didn't want his friend to leave, didn't want to lose someone else he'd become close to, but she couldn't really be sure. Normally she would have gone over and said hello, tried to make them feel better. Much as she loved her job, there were few people in the bull-pen she would have described as her friends except for Jimmy and Clark, and Lois was loyal to her friends. But the numbness, which she knew deep down was just another form of pain, wouldn't let her. So she stood and talked to Gil, to Angela Morettino and Pauline Brewsky. To anybody but Clark, and by extension Jimmy. If she occasionally felt his gaze boring into her back, if she felt the depth of emotion floating around the office, she kept it to herself. And when three pm rolled around, and Clark had to go because he said he'd miss his flight, she didn't change her tactics. She stood with everyone else to shake his hand, ignoring the exasperated look which Jimmy shot her, ignoring the pain on Clark's face though she saw it, just for a second.

_He wanted safe, then he'd get safe. _

Clark said goodbye to everyone, even Perry who came out of his office to shake the younger man's hand. Jimmy hugged him, despite the catcalls it caused (though Lois' heel _accidentally _smashed into Gil Truman's foot, and he immediately shut up). He said goodbye to Gil, goodbye to Angela, to everyone. Lois shook his hand, doing her best this-girly-emotional-stuff-bothers-me face, already falling back into the pattern of pretending, of play-acting which she knew so well. Trying not to remember what those hands felt like, trying not to remember what those hands had done. For her, to her. Trying not to remember, full stop, that her best friend and the first person she had ever really trusted since she was a kid was going away and she was letting him.

It was his decision, she told herself: she was giving him the choice that he'd refused to give her. She was the good guy here.

_Now where have I heard that before, hmm Lois?_

And then he was gone, with a soft "Goodbye Lois," and just for a second she did consider tearing out of the building after him, running and pushing to tell him that he was an idiot and he needed to stay for her, for them. She thought about it, for a second she thought she'd even do it. But the second passed, as so many others had between them. In her mind's eye she followed him down in the elevators, saw him catch a cab. But she didn't see him leave. She still didn't believe it, not really.

He'll be back inside of a week, she told herself, deliberately ignoring how hollow those words sounded to her. He'd come back, because he couldn't just…leave. He wasn't that much of a coward.

She couldn't have hurt him that much, surely? She didn't have that power, that terrifying dread ability, did she?

It couldn't be her fault.

The day was a blur. She answered questions, made contacts. She might even have written a word or two, she couldn't remember. For the first time ever, she was happy when it was time to go home. Though she couldn't imagine why. Once she left she would be alone with her thoughts, and her memories, and her theories, that brain of hers ticking, ticking, ticking away. There were times when she really did think being stupid would have been a blessed relief, that not being able to understand anything or anyone would be a gift.

She could have lived, just for this one night, with being a dumb blond.

But Lois knew she was neither dumb nor blond. And she knew that she couldn't just turn her brain off. She knew she would have to keep going. She didn't really know how to do anything else. She walked home, reminding herself of this fact. If the next few hours or days or months were torture, then she would get through it. That was the point, she was tough enough to get through it. She wasn't like Clark, turning tail and running…

"Lois?"

She actually jumped, despite the fact that the voice was soft. He was floating, about ten feet in the air, beside her. The street lights cast heavy shadows on his face, making his expression impossible to read, but the whole standing-in-thin-air thing was a dead giveaway.

"I didn't mean to startle you."

Lois ordered her heart to stop hammering. She'd been expecting this, wondering when he'd turn up. She'd known he wouldn't leave things the way they were between them; he wasn't like Clark…

_Act natural_. "You just gave me a scare is all," she said casually, trying to ignore the white elephant of tension between them. "I haven't seen you in a while." She said this second part to her shoes, well aware of the last words which they had uttered, _one friend to another_. She hoped he couldn't see her face flaming in the street-light.

"I know." Silence descended, and Lois fought the urge to babble. Letting her mouth run away with her had caused enough trouble the last time he was around: she wouldn't let that happen again.

Of course, awkward silence wasn't that much better.

"Lois-"

"Superman-"

"You first." _Ever the gentleman. _

She took a deep breath. "Superman," she began, her voice faltering, "I, I am so sorry-"

"Lois," he interrupted her, alighting on the ground beside her, his hands resting on her shoulders, "Lois, I think if you apologise to me my head might explode."

She looked up at him, suddenly frightened. Surely he wasn't going to refuse to let her apologise? Reading her reaction, he let a small sad smile split his face. "I should have said that differently: what I meant was that you have nothing to apologise for." He fell into step beside her, causing people to stop and stare. A man in a cape who can fly isn't supposed to walk along the street, she thought. Not beside her, not beside anyone. If he noticed the incongruity, he said nothing about it. Instead he lowered his head towards her, giving her his full attention, just as he always did. Lois often thought that it was why people reacted to him the way they did: he made them feel noticed. Wanted.

It was a gift.

"But Superman," she began again, unable to believe what she was hearing, "The last time we spoke I-"

"Lost your temper and said some things I'm sure you regret." He ducked his head lower, and just for a second he once again reminded her of Clark. She felt the numbness in her chest constrict, felt herself grow a little colder. A little safer. The irony was not lost on her. "I butted into a situation which was none of my business, and I got exactly what I deserved."

"I'm not your business?" She wasn't sure why she said it, except that hearing him talk about her always made her feel better, no matter what had happened. And if there was one thing on earth Lois needed then it was to feel better. Or maybe she just needed to hear someone tell her she wasn't the horrible, destructive force Clark's departure had made her feel she was.

If it was only an ego boost she was after then why couldn't she look him in the eye?

"You'll always be my business, Lois," he answered quietly. If he noticed her sudden discomfort then he gave no sign. "But what happened between you and Clark… I had no right to ask."

"You were trying to help."

His laugh was more rueful than she would have expected. "Yes, I was. But I had no right to be… helping in that way. I was taking advantage."

"You'd never take advantage of anyone."

His smile became wider, even a touch… cynical? No, more mocking, as if he were laughing at himself. The expression seemed out of place on his face, alien. Lois felt for a moment like she was walking with a stranger. "Oh, I'm more than capable of taking advantage of a situation."

Lois tried her cynical face, tried to match his tone. Maybe she could stop feeling bad about Clark for _two seconds_. "So you were trying to take advantage of poor little me?" she asked archly.

His smile, despite its tension, matched hers. "There's nothing poor or little about you, Miss Lane."

"Is that so? Then why do you keep having to save me from bombs, and terrorists, and burning buildings?" She was trying to keep her voice light, playful. To talk emotionless nonsense.

"Because you're nothing but trouble." His smile was wider, his voice matching hers. She couldn't believe they were talking like this, flirting almost. It was like nothing had changed between them.

Maybe nothing had.

The thought began to curl inside Lois head like a snake, as another thought once had: maybe she could stop being unhappy about Clark.

Maybe she could convince herself that the situation with Clark, the thing with the emotion and the hurt and the trying to make it work when he seemed so dead set against it, hadn't been that big a deal at all. She had the words to tell herself that, she could convince herself, couldn't she? Wasn't Superman the one she'd been chasing all along? Wasn't he the amazing one, the person she'd wanted so badly from the moment they met? She could ignore the ache of Clark's loss, run away from it. She could tell herself that it had just been a mistake, and with the reminder of her indiscretion gone to pastures new who was to stop her?

She'd wanted Superman all along, she'd wanted a faraway image because flesh and blood had turned out to be so limited, so limiting. So hurtful. She could become numb, crawl inside this feeling she had with him. He wouldn't hurt her, he'd never be around long enough to hurt her. And the two of them shared a bond, anyone could see it. A bond which couldn't break; a rope which couldn't be untied, couldn't be _unknotted_…

She felt that numbness in her chest grow stronger, felt it become more settled. She waved away a twinge of anxiety, that it was becoming more comfortable, more familiar. Clark had wanted her to be safe: surely this was safe?

Surely you couldn't get much safer than Superman?

"What is it, Lois?" He was frowning at her, his eyes suddenly worried.

He'd said she was nothing but trouble, when Clark said she was anything but. She was used to being trouble, she knew how to do that. She could do this, she could slide inside this identity, this alter-ego. She could do far away and distant, she could live inside of numb.

Because the only alternative was on a plane somewhere, trying to forget her and she had to let him walk away. She couldn't bear to surrender once again to solitude when she'd been so very nearly rid of it.

"What it is, Lois?" he said again, more loudly this time. He wasn't used to her silence, wasn't used to a Lois who didn't talk. It was the longest she'd gone without babbling around him in about two years. She looked up at him, and he seemed… seemed almost nervous, as if he expected her to start shouting at him or something. As if she would be mad at him for a little, tiny bit of flirtation when she was having such a terrible day. As if she had her heart broken and he'd poured salt on the wound.

_I must be imagining things_, she told herself. _Superman isn't about heart-ache and hurt. He's about hope, about flight_. He was a symbol to everyone, he could be a symbol to her.

She'd show him, she thought firmly, proudly: she would show him that she was fine. _She was safe_. That she wasn't pining away for someone who'd thought so little of her he wouldn't even touch her when she asked, nearly begged him to.

She was Lois Lane, ace reporter. She didn't do safe and sound, and a house in the suburbs. She felt her smile become coy, almost of its own volition, it seemed. Like a stranger was controlling her body. She heard her own voice as if someone else was using it. She should have been frightened. She was numb, numb, numb, bright and cold as ice and twice as brilliant. Like him. A diamond, impervious to heat or harm.

"I'm fine," she said firmly, reaching up on her tiptoes and kissing his cheek, murmuring "Thank you." He was so warm, like he was running a temperature, but she knew he wasn't. She'd been saved by him enough times before to know what he felt like.

She'd be saved by him again.

His eyes widened at the contact. "Lois, I - Clark-"

"Isn't here." Her voice sounded firm, resolute.

He fell silent for a moment, his eyes troubled. "Do you wish he was?" he asked her eventually, his eyes searching her face as they had that day on the roof.

"No." _Not so much a sentence as a declaration of war… _

For a second she could have sworn she saw a shadow pass over his face, as if she'd hurt him really badly, but she must have imagined it. She told herself that she'd imagined it.

That nothing could really be her fault.

"What do you want Lois?" he asked her softly, coming to stop on the corner of Appleby Avenue. Clark loved the pistachio nuts Mr. Gonzales sold at the store to her right.

Clark wasn't here, she reminded herself sharply. _Clark was gone. _

She stood up straighter, entering his personal space. She felt him tense up but he didn't pull away. He was staring down at her like she was the only person in the universe who was real. She could feel the heat from his skin radiating outwards in the chill of the night, feel the thrum of energy between them, unpredictable and wild.

She had the odd feeling that she was playing with fire, a fire that would burn white hot and then fly away before it got out of hand. That she was trying to hold wildfire in the palm of her hand, make it into a pet.

But that was ridiculous, wasn't it? The Big Blue Boy Scout, they called him. She would be safe, she would be sound and well. He'd fly away before he could hurt her. She laughed to herself wanly: she'd wanted Clark to stick around and bruise her, and have her bruise him. Have their life together, their emotions and experiences written on the body, on the mind, on the heart. Nothing could be written on his body: it was impervious to harm. They were alike that way, she told herself, both unable to be hurt and bruised. Because if she thought about how bruised she was then she'd go quietly, irredeemably insane. And she didn't want that. She still had the will to live and survive, no matter how tired and strained it was.

She wanted to be warm and cold, safe and in freefall. She wanted dry rain and wondrous hot snow. She wanted-

She wanted Clark, and he didn't want her. At least not enough.

"I want to be safe," she said firmly. She was lying to Superman and it wasn't the first time, she knew that. She also knew it wouldn't be the last. "Can you keep me safe?"

He didn't answer her right away. She could read an internal battle going on behind those eyes, as she had once seen a battle behind Clark's. Physically they were quite alike, though she wouldn't let herself think about that. That there might be a causal link at work here. He lowered his head, his eyes shut. From far away, another part of her, a part which had watched old horror movies and stolen her partner's pistachios, told her that he was hurting and wanted to do something about it. But that part of her had been running things for far too long, and she wasn't about to be let out to play again.

He looked up, his eyes firm. Hard. Brilliant as ice, as a diamond. He touched her face carefully, as if he were examining a precious artifact and not an everyday part of his existence. She could see the tension in his fingers, feel the stress of his touch. They were both impervious, brilliant. In control.

His voice sounded almost ominous in the gathering darkness of the streetlamps. "Yes Lois," he said softly. "I can keep you safe."

Lois nodded, not smiling. She was cold, cold, cold, and numb. But she was safe.

_Because Superman never lies. _

She knew deep down that she'd do that enough for the both of them.

A/N Thank you so much to everyone who's read and and been kind enough to review, especially Tandrelmairon and maiike-fluffy, hope this helps with some of your queries. Can i also give a quick thanks to erin, jess, grace and lara mary who didn't leave an e-mail address for me to thank them in person. As usual any and all feed-back is appreciated so please get in touch. And trust me lads, keep reading: i promise it'll be worth it if i have to sweat blood and give up sleep, lol!

Cheers!


	14. Chapter 14

_Disclaimer_: This fanfiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended

**CHAPTER 14**

_And that was the beginning of the end. Looking back on it, I know that neither of us was really being smart that night. I wondered about it a lot over the years, wondered why he came to me, why he let things go the way they did when he knew what had happened between me and Clark. At the time, I thought that it was because he genuinely couldn't let me go, and for someone who felt as soundly rejected as I did that was a wonderful thought. Gave a measure of security, a measure of knowingness. Made me feel as if I was still in control. I don't know what he got out of it: we've never really talked that much, even since he came back. It's the problem with being a saviour: there's always so many people making demands on your time. But he must have gotten something. Maybe he thought he could make a home, a life here with someone he lo-_

_Say it Lane, spit it out: you've known for long enough. He wanted to make a life with someone he loved. The only problem was, she was in love with someone else. _

_I never wanted to hurt him; I never wanted things to go the way they did. But then I let things get out of hand too. And the Guardian of Metropolis, despite the fact that he disappeared, left us for so long, deserved better than to be used as a band aid for a broken heart. I took advantage of his good nature, I think, took advantage of that need he has to save people. As if anyone could save me but me._

_The months after this night stretched out endlessly. Robberies, kidnappings, corruption at City Hall and fun and games with organised crime, it was business as usual for Mad Dog Lane. We had ourselves a little routine, which involved him dropping by at odd hours, sometimes to talk shop, more often just to say hi. It was… "wonderfully awkward," is the phrase I used to myself at the time. But he just kept coming, and I just kept opening my window. I thought about putting a stop to it a few times in the early days, but the sheer… routine of it made it wonderful, after the upheaval which Derricks had caused. He came by the night he finally re-captured Luthor, he came by the night I finally found out where Genevieve Taylor was being held. Everything seemed to be fine, seemed to be (for me) normal. Except it wasn't. My problems were obvious for anyone to see if they really looked: all you had to do was read my work. I didn't write as well during those months as I had before. Perry tried to talk to me about it, maybe even guessed the cause, but I stone-walled. I refused to believe that my voice, my gift, could be dependant on the presence of a hick from Kansas. Refused to believe that a grown man who used the words "golly," and "swell," could possibly be… be my muse, I suppose. Refused to believe that the spring of words which I carried around inside me could ever dry up. But dry up it did. Pressure produces diamonds, produces works of brilliance. But when you're hiding in numbness and being frozen the words won't come. I genuinely felt like I'd lost my voice: this thing inside me that babbles and cajoles and interrogates and mocks was silent. The ache, the hurt was just too damn blunt to form sentences from. It howled its loss, insisted on its own incoherence. Lane and Kent had been nominated for the Pulitzer three times in the two years we'd worked together: we brought out the best in each other, pushed each other to excel. I'd never really realised how much of an impact he'd had on me until Perry brought the drop in my writing standards up. And what did I do? Did I argue, set out to prove him wrong like I once would have? _

_No, I went looking for Superman. I told myself it was for another article: as long as we continued to be…friendly then I was the goose that laid the golden eggs at the Planet. But it was really because I was hiding, hiding behind the boots and the cape. I hated myself for so long for doing that. It wasn't until a hick of another order, another do-gooder called Richard White came along, that I finally stopped beating myself up over it. But Richard is for later in this story. For the moment let's concentrate on the last time I saw the Man of Steel. Let's concentrate on the night I finally drove him from Metropolis._

_And believe me, "drove," is the operative word here…_

Lois sighed and looked over the article again. Kirsty Paige, the junior science writer at The Planet, had certainly picked an excellent story to make her bi-line debut. "_Planet Krypton Found Intact, S.T.A.R Labs claim_," the article proudly announced, beside a photo of a grinning egg-head and his radio telescope. Lois picked through the article, automatically noting the rough spots, though for a first time piece it was surprisingly polished. S.T.A.R Labs' scientists had been looking for quasars and had unwittingly stumbled across a planet which Superman assured her had blown up hundreds of years ago. It should have been front page news: she wasn't rightly sure why it had been buried in the Sunday Science Section. Superman would be pleased, she thought to herself: he would certainly want to talk to the people who made this discovery. Getting a hold of Kirsty's extension number for him would probably be a good idea…

"Lois?" She looked up to see him standing at her window. Despite herself she smiled. She had expected him to come see her when he heard the news, but she hadn't expected it to be this quickly. He always had something else to keep him busy, and she had no problem with that.

Lois had decided about three months back that she didn't want to know why his not being around much seemed such a relief.

"You heard the news," she said by way of greeting. Things always seemed slightly… awkward between them. They didn't click and fall into swing with one another like she and Clar-

_Don't go there_.

"I went by The Planet earlier and talked to Miss Paige," he said, stepping into her apartment. The cape made him look out of place everywhere, she mused. "I'm still not sure whether it's a hoax or not, but I'm… hopeful." His small smile was certainly brighter than any she'd seen in the last few months. "I was hoping I'd get a chance to talk to you-" Lois frowned: his smile was widening, as if- _As if he were genuinely happy_. Lois repressed a twinge of irritation: she was feeling anything but happy. Clark's first post-card from his world travels had arrived on her desk this morning, courtesy of Jimmy. She's hated herself for it, but she'd looked forward to reading it, wondering if there would be any indication that he knew she'd see it. But there had been none. The disappointment, and her own annoyance with herself for the disappointment, had made her irritable and snappish for the rest of the day.

And here was Superman, _being happy_. The tension which thrummed between them, which she had come to associate so much with his presence, was nearly non-existent. She'd learned to work off it, to use it as… Traction in her tug of war with the universe. Its absence was jarring to her. Something were different, and Lois felt herself begin to tense up, despite his happiness.

_Maybe_, a small voice within her whispered, _because of it_?

"Lois, are you alright?" He frowned, his joy at the news dimmed for a moment, and Lois felt a twinge of dismay that she immediately relaxed a bit. Was she only capable of handling him if he was stressed and sombre?

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said instead, brushing her hair off her face. She'd gotten it cut about four months back, because she was sick of looking in the mirror and remembering what _he'd_ liked about her, what _he'd_ said. The shorter hair was more practical, she'd told herself sternly. She'd thought of getting it dyed too, changing it to any colour other than brown, but the only other shade which would have suited her complexion was red, and she would never bring herself to do that. _It's the colour_, she still heard his voice in her head, _I can never think of a word to describe the colour…_ She forced her smile wider. "We should celebrate," she said teasingly, sidling up to him, entering that personal space of his. Feeling this passion that seemed to have nothing to do with kindness, this anger in sheep's clothing. Her traction in this war against the world.

"We should." For the first time since Clark left he seemed to be… open. He wasn't walking on egg-shells around her. Maybe he'd forgotten that this thing between them was supposed to be contained. Maybe he thought it could be let out to burn.

_Maybe he's just goddamn happy, Lois. Can't you allow that he deserves to be? It's not his fault Clark didn't write anything important to you, when he can so obviously write to Jimmy._

_Would a "dear Lois," letter have made you feel any better?_

She pulled herself back to the present, suddenly feeling sheepish. "Lois," he said softly, almost shyly, making her feel even more of a heel, "Lois, there's something I want you to see. Would you let me…" he grinned widely, joyfully, perhaps amused by his own near-bashfulness "Would you let me take you out of the country for a few hours?"

"I don't know," she said sarcastically "Daddy said you're up to no good, young man." What on earth had made her say that? As if _Daddy_ ever would have objected to her doing something that normal. His beautiful daughter going out with a handsome young man, that was normal wasn't it? Lois ordered her mind not to remember her father's voice that last night before she left for college, talking about beauty, and honour, and what a woman should want. And what it meant if she didn't. Beauty and safety were her birth-right, and she was throwing them away to chase after criminals… She should stay at home. Safe and sound. Not go traipsing around the worst spots in Metropolis with Clark Kent, who seemed to have the ridiculous notion that she could do whatever she put her mind to…

_Daddy wouldn't have liked Clark_, she mused to herself. She forced down the small, wistful glow of happiness the realisation invoked.

If Superman sensed the change in her mood he gave no indication. He still thought they were playing word games. "Well I promise to have you back by midnight," he said laughingly, his voice even deeper than usual, his eyes mock grave. "Will Daddy give his permission then?"

Her lack of joy in this exchange would have horrified her six months ago.

He held out his hand, and Lois paused, just for a moment. Something told her that this night was different: his mood, his request that they go somewhere was so dissimilar from their normal encounters. But she could handle it, she knew she could. She found her mind returning, briefly, to that moment on the roof of the Planet when she'd realised what Clark had told him about them: she remembered her feeling of being out of control, being high on her own anger. Suddenly she was back in that moment, as real to her as if she'd travelled back in time. But why had that of all things occurred to her? She wasn't angry now, was she? She was touched, happy for her friend. This panic was just a ghost, an echo of another day.

Maybe her mind was trying to warn her, remind her of what could happen with this person. Or maybe she was just having the same out-of-control reaction a little more quietly. Lois ordered her brain to shut up.

She took his hand resolutely, stepping onto his toes, ignoring the echoing ache within her which had so suddenly risen. She put her arms around him, squeezing slightly, and despite herself rested her forehead against his chest. She wanted so much in that second to be warm, and he was certainly warm.

_How long was it since she'd felt warm?_ _How could she not have missed it?_

"Take me," she said tightly, her tension thrumming suddenly against this presence, so known and once so longed for. "Take me up."

"Okay Lois," he said softly, soothingly. And oh, how she ached for Clark in that moment.

They flew. Faster than they'd gone before, as if they were running it seemed to Lois. As if Superman ever had to run from anything. The lights of Metropolis spread beneath her, twinkling merrily in the dark, and then the ocean as wide and endless as heaven. She grew colder, despite her shirt and jeans, and he held her closer, sharing his own heat with her, a part of who he was. The only part of who he was she'd ever asked him to share. It was more than enough, when cold and numb were what you craved. Onwards they sped, across water like polished obsidian. And there before her she saw it, rising out of the darkness like a fallen star: another continent, another type of earth. The thing she would one day come to know as the Fortress of Solitude.

"Do you like it?" he asked softly once they landed. She hated that she could tell her answer mattered to him. Lois looked around the empty, echoing chambers. It was beautiful, it was safe. It was cold and barren, for all its light. How could anyone like this? The battered black couch from Clark's old apartment popped into her head from nowhere, and she forced the image away.

"It's very impressive," she said politely. Everything was brilliant, spectacular. Hard as a diamond and twice as bright. It looked like she felt. Something about that thought bothered her deeply, but she couldn't work out why. She didn't _want_ to work out why.

"I've never brought anyone else here," he said quietly. So softly spoken, for all his strength. Like someone else she'd known, centuries ago it seemed. "But I thought you should get to see it. This- This is what Krypton looked like. Looks like," he corrected himself with a small smile. He seemed nervous and proud. Lois wished fervently that she could match his enthusiasm, but she couldn't. This place, this place was ice cold. This place was Marianne Derricks' bedroom. Nothing could live here, nothing could grow. Nobody could ever be warm here.

_What else had she expected?_

Her thoughts went again to Clark, and those damn pistachios from Mr. Gonzales' stall on Appleby. She saw him in her mind's eye, throwing them into the air while he made her watch something on The Monster Channel. They bickered, they joked. She'd thought they could be warm together, and now she was frozen to the core. _When the hell had she become so cold? When the hell had it started to seem like a good idea?_

_Was this… this monument to being alone really what she was now? Who she was now?_

_Oh God._

"Lois, what's the matter?" She suddenly realised that she'd given a hacking, dry sob from deep in her chest. So numb she hadn't even noticed herself beginning to cry. "Lois, I just wanted you to see this, I wanted you to know." His face suddenly cleared, as if he's worked something out. "I'm not going back there, Lois," he said tightly, urgently. "I couldn't leave you. Not even if I wanted to." He said the last part more to himself than to her. Lois felt her chest constrict, her diaphragm and glottis working. But it _felt_ like someone else's body; it felt unreal.

"I'm so cold," she rasped. And suddenly, the hurt of the last months, the ache of her partner's loss, came flooding back to her. If ever there was a bad time to begin the mourning process it was now. But the flood-gates had been opened, and all that she'd tried to compress into oblivion was bursting out. She felt bizarrely sorry that she'd spoiled his happy news, heard her voice mutter it raggedly. She was aware of his presence, felt him holding onto her as someone else once had. Another screw-up like her.

_Jesus, I've lost him. _

"I'm not going anywhere," he continued to say it. "I'm right here, I'll always be right here. I could never leave you." She wasn't sure why he said the last part like he was muttering a curse, a doom laid upon his head.

She should have corrected him, she should have explained that this wasn't about him leaving. But he was being so… kind. And now that it came down to it she couldn't bear to detail how heartlessly she had been taking advantage of that kindness, of his hopes. He should be happy, he should be overjoyed. Instead, he looked confused as hell. And he was trying. Trying so hard to do what she wanted even though he didn't know how. She remembered what that felt like.

"I know," she said instead. She figured it covered all eventualities without actually being a lie. She looked up at him, right up at those ice blue eyes. Like a diamond. She wanted to be warm, she couldn't bear another moment of coldness. She wanted heat, she wanted to be kind. She wanted to be tender, to erase her mistakes and her sins with gentleness, with care. She wanted to stop being alone. "I know you'll never leave me. And I want to stay." For him, because he deserved it. Cold wasn't a choice, it was a sacrifice for him. Because he deserved someone to stay here in the frozen waste and keep him company.

"You want to stay?" he whispered.

"It was always you I wanted." Because convincing him now was a kindness and not a selfish act on her behalf. Because she wouldn't do to him what Clark had done to her. Because she wasn't ready for a broken heart to be her fault, for someone leaving to be her fault. Whether it was twenty years ago or five months ago.

"Lois…" He stared down at her. "Lois, I can make you warm, if you'll let me."

_You seem awfully obsessed with the verb "to let," Kansas…_

"All I've ever wanted is to be sa- to be warm with you. To be with you." Lois knew, somehow _knew_, that he was saying something different from what she wanted to hear. But words are tricky things; they have so many meanings. And with enough practice and a dash of willing blindness you can make them mean whatever you want.

She touched his face as he touched hers. Controlled, like he was fragile, like they both were. Living creatures who wouldn't heal if they broke, beings who would shatter apart like egg-shells. "I can make _you_ warm," she said instead_. I can be kind, I know I can be kind._ "You do safe and I'll do warm, and everything will work out fine." He frowned as he touched her cheek, bringing her face up to his. He seemed so careful with her, as if she were a hot-house flower, _a fragile beautiful piece of glass. _And this _was_ fragile, because unreal things always are. She stood on her tiptoes, as if she were learning to dance. She kissed him lightly, hating and loving the control she felt, hating and loving this feeling between them. Kindness in wolf's clothing.

Their breath frosted before their faces, their limbs twined together. They didn't tie themselves in knots, he wouldn't allow it. They were stiff, slow-moving. There was no life in their movements, no joy. She felt like she wasn't really touching him at all, even as her hands roamed over a body unlike any other, even as she unclasped clothing for them both. He didn't trip over anything in the dark, as Clark once had, laughing and eager in a three piece suit. Closer and closer they got, and still they were so far apart. And burning as her body felt, Lois felt like the loneliest person on the face of the earth.

The bed, the sheets were surprisingly warm, but Lois felt cold to the bone. _So this is snow-blindness._

As a performance she couldn't fault it, she told herself. But it was a performance, not even she could convince herself otherwise. And kindness was not an excuse to be so heartless.

On either side.

_So careful, so controlled. There was no life in it, no passion. _Something told her safety wasn't supposed to feel like this.

She didn't sleep afterward, didn't fall into a tired, fitful rest. She felt awake, totally awake for the first time in months. She let him sleep, watched his chest rise and fall. There in the harsh light of The Fortress, for the first time since Clark left she felt her words bubbling up inside her. And they were anguished, angry. _You can't be willingly blind anymore Lois!_ They screamed_. Look where numbness and safety has gotten you! Look, it's sleeping **right there**._ _You know how this ends, Lois: you must now how this ends_. She got up, pulled on her clothes. She knew what she had to do, because she'd let herself go so far off course. She couldn't keep this up, she couldn't live her life as a performance. In that moment she realised the difference between panic and determination. And she was determined. She would go no farther than this: she wasn't sure she could.

He knew it the moment he opened his eyes, and she felt the tiniest sliver of pity for Clark, that morning in her apartment, staring at her in his three piece suit.

"This isn't what you wanted." It wasn't a question.

"Saying "sorry, but no," really won't help will it?" She stared at him, wishing fervently that she didn't have to hurt him. But of course she did.

"This is never going to work, is it?" That wasn't a question either. "You and me." And he shook his head, his face a mask. "It's just not possible."

She lowered her head. "No." _Even for a man who can fly…_

"I'll fly you home Lois, don't worry." His voice was surprisingly even. She knew better than to think it would stay that way.

"Thanks." He dressed and she turned away. Staring at the cold dead place she'd tried to find warmth in. Nothing could be warm here, she thought: nothing could grow. Why had she ever thought it could? But one thing she did know.

She was done with cold and numb. She was done with being a coward. She wanted to live, she wanted to be warm, and she would have to find that within herself. It wasn't his place to be her saviour: it was his place to be her friend, someone she cared about. If she was very lucky she'd get a chance to tell him that. But not tonight: she could see it in the set of his shoulders, the look on his face that he needed space, needed some time to be alone and lick his wounds. She understood that. He wasn't alien in _that_ respect.

He dropped her off at her balcony, but he didn't fly off. "What _did_ you want, Lois?" he asked in the dawn's rising light, hovering in thin air. He was a marvel, a wonder, but his voice sounded as hers once had, deadened.

She thought of telling him the truth. _I wanted Clark_. But that just seemed cruel. She looked inside herself, wondering whether she had the words to explain all this, since her gentlest words had been silent for so long.

"I wanted a garden," she heard her voice say. "I wanted a garden bursting into life. I wanted… to be able to grow. Everything changes, Superman: I wanted to be able to change too." _To change_. _To be warm. _

He nodded. "I can't change," he muttered. "I can't give you that." She knew nobody could. He just hung there, in mid-air, for another moment, as if he had something else to say. Almost as if he had something to tell her. Lois leaned forward to listen: it was the least she could do, but at the last minute he flew off, probably to brood on his thoughts. She nodded, allowing him the indulgence. He'd had a rough night. She'd see him in a couple of weeks, whenever the next natural disaster turned up, and maybe then they'd begin to talk. To rebuild what they once had between them. She would give him some time, but she would give herself more. She would have to look at some of the things within her, the dark parts of the psyche that she never explored. Because Lois vowed she would never be so wilfully reckless with another person again. She's show him, she'd make it up to him.

He just had to be willing to give her a chance.

_I didn't know, until much later, that this would be the last time I ever saw him. And I also didn't know that something, some**one** else, had begun to grow that night, in the coldness of the frozen north. A garden, my garden, who would bring more warmth and joy and growth than I could ever imagine. I knew nothing of his arrival, wouldn't figure it out for months. And when I did, I bowed my head and thanked my friend, who had after all, kept his word: he gave me back my warmth. _

_Because Superman never lies. _

_He just doesn't always tell you the truth you want to hear either._

A/N This was another bitch to write, and once again I am asking for feedback on how successful it was. Please let me know what you thought. There's only probably one more to go, and maybe an epilogue, so this might be your last chance to berate me for my cruelty to Lois and Clark. And thanks to Dandy, blighted metal and everyone else who reviewed. Cheers!


	15. Chapter 15

_Disclaimer: _This fanficiton is not written for profit and no infrigement of copyright is intended. Oh, and the AU element is getting slightly more "slightly..." Try to keep up, gentle readers:-)

**CHAPTER 15**

_"The book of life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends in Revelations." _

Oscar Wilde, _Lady Windermere's Fan_

_And just like that he was gone. Didn't say goodbye (though given what had happened I didn't really expect him to, when I thought about it). The muggers must have been the first people to notice his absence, but of course they didn't come into The Planet to tell us. We had to figure that part out for ourselves. It was news for months, the question of what had happened, of where he'd disappeared to. Most people didn't even believe he was gone in those early days; they thought that maybe he was hurt or waiting for another moment to come back. When the public finally did accept it, there was anger. People felt betrayed, let down. There were editorials, interviews in newspapers and on TV. Nobody could understand it, everyone wanted to know why. And of course, the only person who could have answered the why if not the where was keeping her mouth shut. You can't imagine the guilt I felt, about what I'd done to him, about what I'd cost the world. I couldn't even let myself be angry, and for someone as type A as me, that was torture._

_This need to do something, **anything**, to push and to fight, truly is a double-edged sword. It let me survive Christopher Derricks, let me fight for Clark Kent. And led to me pushing Superman to leave. And I know it did. Ain't that a kick in the head?_

_But guilty as I felt, terrible as I felt, I'd learned my lesson. I'd seen just how badly I could let a situation go, and how much it could cost you. I'd seen what happened when you weren't honest. If I'd been honest with Clark that first night, if I'd taken more time and care, then things would not have gotten so out of control. Hell, we might even have dated, gotten to know one another. Come up with a way to live together, instead of lurching from one feeling to another, one moment to another. I wish I hadn't rushed things, had taken enough time and trouble and trust to go slowly. In my defence, I would like to point out that… I know it makes me sound like such a girl, but I couldn't believe I actually felt the way I did. Couldn't believe that this thing between us, which had snuck up on me so unawares, was real. I was panicked, and scared, and overjoyed too. It was the first time I'd ever been in love, really in love. And that's something I never thought I'd feel. I knew on instinct how rare it was, how lucky I was. And I wanted so badly to explore this feeling, because this was a place, a continent I'd never visited before. Never thought I'd get to visit. You figure out you can fly, wouldn't you want to stretch it, to test your wings and feel the wind on your face? _

_Caution seems quaint, at moments like those, but I now know it isn't. _

_You see, the thing of it is… I never thought I'd be in love. I thought… I thought deep down that nobody could love me. The only man who ever did before that was my dad, and he still left, abandoned his "beautiful Lois," and never really came back except to berate or criticise. I didn't love, didn't trust. I told myself everything was my fault, my responsibility. Like I said, me and Clark aren't so very different, whether I wanted to recognise it or not. _

_Jesus, I was a mess._

_When Superman left, that's when I started to get my act together. He forced me to look at all this stuff, all the hidden logic I'd been operating under for years. It was like I needed to do penance, and figuring out how I'd gotten so screwed up was the way to do it. I told Clark that you can't go through life without being hurt, that you can't control the universe, and I should have taken my own advice. It wasn't until about a year after he left that I let myself realise that. I still don't know why things went the way they did, why he stopped things that night in his apartment. I think I understand Superman's logic better, because I'd been in his shoes. All I know is that Clark didn't want me enough to stick around, but if he had…_

_If he had who knows what would have happened? But he didn't and them's the breaks kid. I had someone else to worry about now._

_I had Jason, another amazing little person to take care of, and to guard. I had to learn responsibility, because I couldn't bear the idea that I'd screw him up by being an idiot. If it wasn't for my amazing boy then I wouldn't have been so fierce about all this self-analysis, but I needed to do it for him. Because he deserved a mother who had some sense about herself and the world, who didn't hurt those around her because she didn't know any better. I knew as soon as I figured out about Jason that I would have to get my head out of my ass, all the way this time._

_And of course, part of getting my head out of my ass involved Richard White. _

_Richard and me, it just… fit. From the moment we met it was natural, it was easy. He reminded me a little of Clark physically, I remember thinking it the first time we met, but he wasn't so guarded. So tightly wound. Richard encouraged confidences, and he encouraged me. It was because of Richard that I found my voice again, found my gentler words. If it hadn't been for him then my whole dark night of the soul might have been a lot more painful. He listened, he talked to me. And when I found out about Jason, he was there for me. He took me to the pre-natal appointments, helped me pick out baby names. Richard picked the name Jason because it means "healer," in Greek. And he told me that my child would be a greater healer than time ever would. _

_He was right about that. Irritatingly enough, he was right about a lot of things. But don't tell him: I don't want him to get a swollen head._

_A year passed, then two. We were so close, we talked about everything. He respected that I needed time, and we were friends first but I always knew how he felt. Always knew where his interest lay. Richard has a self-confidence that can just floor you: it's the big difference between him and Clark. He goes after what he wants with a passion. And he did want me. The irony (considering how things turned out) is that I did wait with him, made sure I'd considered all my options. We began dating in the Fall, and we moved in together by Christmas. We took our time, and we were always honest with each other, I'm proud of that. He was there when Jason was born, when he took his first crawl across the carpet. He loved being a dad, and he's the only father Jason's ever known, the only father Jason's ever needed. He loves the kid, adores him in point of fact._

_I sometimes wonder whether things would have gone differently if he thought that Jason were his. But then I tell myself that that would just be an even bigger mess, and it was a big enough mess as things were._

_The thing about honesty, it has a tendency to come back and bite you on the ass. Me and Richard, we were always honest with one another, and that means being honest when you know things aren't working out. A bed for two, when the relationship's turning south, is a helluva lot lonelier than The Fortress of Solitude. And we both felt it. The relationship never stopped being warm, I never stopped loving him, but… I suppose I ended up loving him in a different way. And he felt it. Felt the passion between us shift into something else, something just as precious. He's too damn smart for his own good sometimes, that man. I tried, tried to soldier on for him, for Jason, but he was having none of it. _

_"I'm not your penance, Lois," he told me. "And I'm not your consolation prize either. We both deserve better." _

_Like I said, honesty can bite back. _

_When I say those words it sounds harsh, but it wasn't. Richard doesn't believe anyone is on earth to suffer, and he won't be an excuse for me beating myself up. He says he deserves better, and so do I. And like I said, he has a habit of being right about that sort of thing. When he came home and told me about Shannon it was… It was a relief, in a weird way. A relief that I hadn't driven him to leave the country. Hell, I even helped him move into their new apartment, which is about the most grown-up act I can imagine performing. He sees Jason all the time, takes him to ball games and the park. He's his dad, and my friend. I'm lucky, I know I am. I found a weird contentment in our relationship, a peace I'd never known before. I look back at my life, my choices, and I see the beauty of it, the weave of everyone who's ever touched me, ever bruised me. Ever loved me. It's not meant to be perfect: it's beauty lies in its texture, its tears and wears. And the truth is, for all its trouble and strife, I see that my life is beautiful. I know that's the truth, and the truth can set you free._

_So why don't I feel free?_

_I'll tell you why: because they're both back. Both of them appeared back around the same time, as if karma was waiting for me to relax and then jump up behind me and yell "boo!" Me and Big Blue, we'll be fine: When Superman saved me from that plane, when he made his little joke that only I would get, I realised that I'd been forgiven. Maybe he felt bad about leaving, maybe he felt it cancelled out my karmic debt. I didn't want to let him do that, didn't want to walk away from what happened because I've been holding onto it for so long, but Richard's right: I wasn't put on this earth to suffer. When I first talked to him, when I snapped "How could you just leave us like that?" what I should have said, what I meant was "How could you not give me the chance to explain, to make it up to you?" But when I pulled him out of the darkness of the ocean, when I saw what that bastard Luthor had done to him, I figured I would have to give up my anger. It's very nearly the last vestige of that period in my life. As combatants go I think we've battled each other enough. We've inflicted enough body blows, enough bruises. And he is Jason's father: I can't hate the guy because not only do I know I've wronged him, but he's also half of my wonderful, precious little boy. I know he'll never be around like another father: I wouldn't want him to be. But he needs to know Jason, he deserves to. And as my little jaunt on The Gertrude has proved, pretty soon Jason is gonna need him. Richard and I talked about what we'd do when Jason's powers manifested, and put it this way: I feel a lot better knowing there's someone around who can teach him how to control the flight, and the vision, and all the other box-of-delight gifts my son has inherited. _

_No, it's not the truth about Superman that's making me feel trapped. It's Clark Kent._

_It always seems to come back to Clark Kent._

_I couldn't believe it when I first heard that he was back. Perry told me, sliding a glance from behind his newspaper to see my reaction, just obvious enough to make sure I caught it. I've always suspected that the Chief knew about me and Clark, had put two and two together. He just had the good grace to keep his opinions on the subject to himself. Both the White men were waiting for my reaction, I was painfully aware of it, but I brushed it off. _

_**I** still remember what a big mouth Gil Truman has._

_I dreaded seeing him again, didn't really sleep the night before it happened. I must've drank about six cups of coffee that morning, so many that Richard threatened to tell the canteen to cut me off. It was like the last five years, the change in my feelings and perspective, hadn't happened at all. _

_I didn't know how right I was._

_Because in he came bumbling, playing that geek game which always drove me nuts, and despite everything, despite all I'd told myself, I felt disappointment. Some tiny part of me had hoped that things had changed, that he'd come back wiser. That he'd come back looking for me. I told myself it was far more likely he'd come back with a wife and a kid, but when your heart doesn't want to believe something it has a tendency to override the brain. But nothing had changed: he'd gone backwards, it seemed. The guy I knew during those last couple of months, the man I'd finally realised I cared about, didn't appear, hidden as always behind the act of being Clark Kent. _

_I was so mad at him I could have throttled him. _

_Not, you understand, because he didn't sweep me off my feet or any of that mumbo-jumbo: I'm too wise to have considered that. But because the amazing man I'd known was gone, hidden away… I felt like he was doing a disservice to himself. Pretending, still pretending to be something he wasn't. And I hated that he would do that to himself. I'd hoped that even if he wasn't around me then the last five years had been kind, that he'd grown and changed and had all the things I'd had. I wanted that for him, even if he did break my heart. But he was in the same place he was when I first knew him, and he's in the same place now. It seems to me that life has taught him nothing, and that's a damn shame. _

_I haven't seen him since before New Krypton. I know how close he and Superman are, and I can understand him wanting to take a couple of days. I'm sitting here, trying to think of something to type in case Blue does pull through, something he can read that can make him understand: "Lois, she's not in a bad place anymore. She still cares about you, and you've had a positive effect, even when you thought you hadn't." I want him to wake up and read "Why the World Needs Superman." But I'm not sure whether he ever will. And still I find myself coming back to Clark Kent._

_That's why I'm angry at the guy. That's why I'm bitter. He's a distraction. It's not because I'm still hurting, it's not because there's still something there, no matter what Richard says. I'm mad at him because he's let himself down. I let go of everything else years ago. I know I did. _

_I'm writing "Why the World Needs Superman," NOT "Why Lois Lane Needs Clark Kent." _

_We're over, we're done with. He wants to rewind things and that's fine. _

_I know the truth about the relationship now, and the truth will set you free._

_So why don't I feel free?_

_Why don't I-_

"Hey Lo," Richard said quietly, pushing the door to her study open. It had been a long time since he'd interrupted her at work, and she felt a surge of surprise that she hadn't heard him come in. He still had his key in case of emergencies, but he rarely used it. She surreptitiously wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before turning around.

He made no comment: Richard knew that Lois had changed a lot in the last five years but she'd never openly cry in front of anyone, and that was a fact. She raised her eyebrows at him, and though she knew he noticed the tears he still didn't ask. He didn't need to. He'd seen Superman after New Krypton, and he knew their history.

"I just wanted to make sure you and Jason were ok," he said softly.

"Yeah, he's upstairs sleeping." Inexorably Lois felt her eyes being drawn back to the computer screen where those five words and her cursor were waiting, waiting, waiting. She couldn't believe she was even writing this. But she knew she had to, for everyone's sake. And she knew he deserved to know, because he'd saved her, and her son, and nearly died in the process.

And also because, finally, he'd said goodbye.

She felt at peace about their history, closed and… well not happy, but there was a sense of culmination. Of things coming full circle. All she needed was for him to pull through, and all would be right with her world, for the first time that she could remember. She needed him to wake up, and hear her say the words she never would have said five years ago: _I'm sorry. But you're not on your own anymore._

Richard, probably sensing her mood, made a show of trying to look at the computer screen, craning his neck exaggeratedly to make her laugh, and despite herself Lois smiled a little. "It's "Why the World Needs Superman," if you must know."

He checked the page count at the bottom of the screen. "That's a lot of reasons, Lois." They shared a smile, the smile of two people who'd come through more than anyone would ever know together.

Lois sighed. She didn't want to talk to him about this, and yet… Experience had taught her that the more she didn't _want_ to talk about something, the more likely it was that she _should_ talk about it. "I…" she paused, squaring her shoulders. Richard leaned against her desk, folding his arms, knowing what was coming. He _had_ known her for five years. "I meant to start writing about Superman, but I started writing about Clark. And yes, I do feel like an absolute heel because of that."

"Do you know why you started writing about Clark?"

_Temporary insanity? _She was tempted to answer. But that was defensiveness, and she knew it. Why _had_ she begun writing about her former partner? Had the fact that she'd seen her own son's powers in action brought back the hunt for Christopher Derricks, and all the emotional trauma associated with the time Jason was conceived? Was it that the two men were linked inexorably in her head by that darkest time in her life, making Clark and Superman somehow inseparable to her? Or was it that nearly losing Superman, seeing him so battered and hurt, had brought back the memory of nearly losing Clark?

Maybe it was all three.

No, she was _certain_ it was all three.

And also, she had to admit to herself, this feeling of helplessness, watching Clark procrastinate on the one hand and Superman getting hurt on the other, with her seemingly helpless to intervene, was also reminding her of the Time Before Jason, as she always referred to it in her head.

_Some things never change._

"Lois," Richard said quietly, his voice soothing against the hum of the computer screen, "Can I offer you a little advice?"

She turned the chair to him, mock frowning, not ready yet to be completely serious (_that's defensiveness, Lois_!). "You only make that statement when you're about to say something you know is going to result in your bodily harm."

He grinned his brightest smile, the one she'd first noticed, the one which had reminded her of another do-gooder she'd known long ago. "Yup, that's what I'm about to do," he informed her cheerfully. She shot him her Unamused Look, which did nothing to deter him. It never had. "Lois, have you ever stopped to think that maybe there's still something there between you and Clark? That that's why you're still mad at him, even after all this time?"

She scoffed. "And that has to do with Superman how?"

He shrugged. "Your mind is a murky, murky place Lois. And nobody really knows their way around it except you. Who knows what mysterious reasons your subconscious could have for tying the two together? It's not like the three of you have any history in common, now is it?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him. _Smart-ass._

"Superman, the father of my child, is in the hospital Richard! You saw the state he was in when we pulled him out of the water, you saw the way he fell to earth! I have no business thinking about Clark Kent-"

"And yet you are," he spoke over her. There were times, Lois mused, when he really did like to live dangerously. "Look, Lo… All I'm saying is, you're a wonderful woman. You really are. But you're always too damn ready to blame yourself for everything." He held up a hand to ward of her protests. "It's what makes you compassionate Lois: and that's not a bad trait. But more than anything else, you should have some compassion for yourself. And maybe, just maybe, for him." She wasn't sure which _him_ Richard meant. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

She opened her mouth to retort and then shut it again. For the first time in years she was speechless.

"You're thinking about him for a reason, Lois. Just explore it." His grin became lopsided, even a little sad. "You know you can survive anything your subconscious can throw at you: you've done it before." And then he leaned forward, kissing her softly on the forehead, and headed up to check on Jason.

Why did every man in her life seem instinctively to know when to make an exit?

She sat, frowning, willing her mind to be calm and yet knowing that it wouldn't be. _You're thinking about him for a reason, Lois_. Why _would_ she write about Clark instead of the Man of Tomorrow? Why try to pour it out of her mind, her heart, now?

Why was it still "Why Lois Lane Needs Clark Kent," that was pushing at her mind and not "Why the World Needs Superman"?

She stood up, shaking her head, trying to clear it, and pulled out a cigarette. Pushing open the bay doors of the house, she meandered slowly into the garden, her mind distracted, unfocussed.

"You know you really shouldn't smoke, Lois."

She jumped at the voice, and immediately wished she hadn't. Clark Kent, as if fate herself had called him, was standing in her garden. How the hell did he even get in? she thought, feeling her irritation begin to mount.

_You're thinking of him for a reason, Lois._

"You shouldn't sneak up on people, Clark," she said instead, resisting the urge to fidget, to snap. After all that had happened she couldn't start taking liberties, couldn't let her mouth run away with her. He wasn't particularly important in her life, now was he?

He was still smiling, the expression reminding her oddly of Jason's. Gentle and innocent, in a 6'4, built-like-quarterback kinda way. _He's anything but innocent, _she reminded herself sternly.

"Weren't you at the hospital?" she asked instead, trying not to sound accusing and knowing, as she always did with him, that she had just missed.

"There was nothing I could do for him, Lois. He broke all the needles, remember?"

"But he's…" her own smile dimmed as worry seized her. "He was okay, right?" she eventually finished. "When you left?"

"He will be." Still he was hovering at the edge of the garden, staring at her as if he were memorising her expression. She began to feel self-conscious. Perhaps sensing her shift in mood he let his eyes drop, turning his back to her.

"Been anywhere besides in the hospital?" It was a dumb question, but anything to fill the silence.

He was staring fixedly at a point on their fence, his brows knit. Once again, Lois was reminded of her son. "I- I went to see an old friend," he said eventually. "Someone I hadn't talked to in far too long."

"And what did they say?"

He smiled ruefully, but didn't answer her question for a moment. Instead he looked up, his eyes bright, determined. Lois wondered what it meant. "That I'm an idiot."

"They must be an old friend."

"She is."

Was that a hint? A warning? Was there a wife, girlfriend? Why the hell should she care?

He paused, everything about him screaming his discomfort. Were they about to have The Talk? The one where he finally explained what had happened, where he tried to explain, maybe even make it up to her? He still had his back to her. _Of course _he couldn't look her in the eye. "Lois, I need to show you something."

A photo, a family portrait?

"Please come here." His voice was getting deeper, more clipped. She wondered what he could mean, but despite her nervousness, despite her sudden apprehension she did as he asked. She closed the space between them.

Still his back was turned, his head bowed. "Lois, could you lift up my shirt at the back?"

"You want me to stare at your ass Kansas?" The words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself. Despite all she'd learned about herself these last five years, the smart-ass really was the last thing to go.

He chuckled slightly. "You can if you want." Then he seemed to recollect himself. "Please, Lois. Just do this for me." Something about the tone of his voice tugged at her memory, reminding her of someone she couldn't quite place. Still, she did as he asked, pulling up his jacket and waist-coat, untucking the white shirt. Unsure why her hands shook just a little. The lights from the house shone brightly in the garden as she examined the pale skin she had touched before, her finger-tips making contact gingerly, wondering what he-

_What the hell was that?_

Lois suddenly leaned down, all thoughts about appropriateness and their history forgotten. There, in Clark's back, was the most vicious looking wound she'd ever seen. Veins of green pulsed out from a central cut, jagged and horrible. It looked like a burning, emerald sunset against his skin, and despite everything, despite the last five years she felt her fury rise, her anger that someone had hurt him. That someone had wounded him like this.

"Who did this to you, Clark?" she demanded, her voice furious, livid.

"Lex Luthor. When he stabbed me in the back on New Krypton."

The world seemed, very suddenly, to have stopped moving. Lois had that sickening feeling divers get when they venture too deep, like the universe was pressing in on her. She couldn't have heard that right.

He turned to her, his eyes wide, troubled, _sorry_. And she knew in that moment that she had.

She stared up at him, suddenly feeling like she was the one with the x-ray vision. It was as if the glasses weren't there, and she could see his face for the first time. _Superman is actually Clark Kent…_ Her heart was starting to thump in her chest, her adrenaline building, the shock of her realisation giving way, any minute now she knew, to abject fury.

"You sonofabitch."

She wanted to turn around, go back in the house, never look at him or even think of him again. All her guilt about taking advantage, all her heart-break and sorrow, and they were the same damn person? A million thoughts flashed through her mind: fury at her own pricked pride (_Glasses, all it takes to fool me is a pair of glasses!_?), and embarrassment, and sorrow at all that had been missed and lost… But more than anything anger, because if this was who he was then what had she been doing for the last five years? Trying to make up for a trespass, a sin she'd never even committed? And the truly infuriating thing was that she had become a better person because she'd thought she'd taken advantage of him that night at The Fortress. She had him to thank for her personal growth and happiness.

_Oh sweet Jesus how she wanted to slap him, but she knew she'd only hurt her hand._

"Lois," he began, afraid and almost timid, as he'd (_he'd!_) been on the roof of The Planet five years ago, "Lois, I had to tell you." He made a step towards her and now she backed away, where a second earlier she'd been rooted to the spot. He held up his hands in supplication. "I didn't get it, Lois: I truly didn't get it."

"I was there Clark," she snapped viciously, feeling her anger gearing up to come out to play as it hadn't in five years "You got plenty."

He shook his head, making to touch her again, and again she backed away. She saw the hurt at this on his face, and felt her own pity at his pain. And then she wanted to smack herself for feeling sorry for the bastard.

"Lois, you don't understand-"

"You're damn right I don't-"

"I didn't get it, I didn't understand." He sounded as close as she'd ever heard him to babbling. "I've grown up surrounded by human beings but I've never been one of them. I've always known I couldn't understand what it was like for them-"

"And now you do? Now that you've taken my life and turned it upside-down you think you do?"

"I've never carried a scar before Lois. Not one that you can see."

She stopped dead. _"What?"_

"I didn't understand how you could be this, this vulnerable and live, Lois. I didn't know how you could bear to be this fragile." He pushed his hair angrily off his face, trying to find words to explain something which Lois could tell meant so much to him. "When you can't experience something for yourself, you can't know that it's not that important." He began to pace, there in her garden. "When I hurt Lana, when I hurt you, I didn't listen when you told me what it meant to you because all I could see was what it meant to me." He stopped, his eyes searching her face, and despite everything Lois felt her anger falter at the sheer desperation on his features. "I don't know what it feels like to be bruised, like humans are bruised every day. And I told myself that it must be so much more painful, and alienating, than they said, because I didn't know for myself. I didn't listen because I couldn't imagine how you lived through it every day." His shoulders slumped. " But when I was lying in that hospital bed, feeling everything that Luthor had done to me, thinking about how different I was… How alone, despite everything… I saw this mark, and suddenly it made sense. I realised, Lois…"

"Realised what?" she asked more gently, her anger easing slightly.

"I'm not so very alone," he said. "And I'm not so very different. I just had to… live inside your vulnerability for a little bit to finally understand that."

"And that's what brought you here?" she asked, her voice still soft, using her gentler words. He looked so lost.

He shook his head sadly. "No, no when I left the hospital I went and talked to Lana, because there was a lot else about women that I realised I'd probably been mistaken about." He sank down into the grass, and Lois felt herself sinking down with him though she still kept her distance. "When I left Smallville for The Fortress, we… We had angry words. We didn't part well, and she was the first person besides my folks I ever really loved." He smiled ruefully at some memory, and Lois felt herself soften more. "She said terrible things, things I knew I'd driven her to say, and I thought it was because-" his voice stopped for a moment. "I took it as proof of how alien I was, that I drove her to it. I took it as proof that I would always be alone, always be different. I thought it was my nature, and my mission, that kept us apart. I thought she hated me." He squeezed his eyes shut, his head cocked towards the sky. "The two things you see, they were synonymous in my head." And he smiled his rueful, sad, self-mocking smile.

"And you and me?" _Why oh why did she have to ask that? Why couldn't she just let it be?_

"When I saw what Derricks was doing, I thought I could, could… re-write the past. Save those girls the way I never could save Lana. Make Clark Kent mean something other than loneliness and harm. I thought I could change things, but I wasn't changing them, not really. I was just… Just rearranging my assumptions, I can see that now." He looked up at her, very hard. "And it cost me you."

His voice reminded her of her own, that night in his apartment when he'd pushed her away. She didn't want to feel pity for him, but then she'd been in his shoes.

"I'm sorry Lois. I'm sorry that I took advantage, and I'm sorry that I made mistakes. I'm so sorry that I hurt you. But please believe me that not being with you is the worst punishment I'll ever suffer."

"Why did you come back to me?" she asked quietly. It had been bothering her for years. "Why did you come back to me, in the cape, that night on Appleby? Why… Why did you eventually bring me to the Fortress?"

The smile grew more wan. "I thought… I thought I could make things work with you as Superman. I thought you'd let me… Let me pass off that pretence of affection as the real thing. Thought I could keep you safe and not hurt you, and still get to be with you too." He shook his head at the memory, gave a sad little chuckle. "I thought I could have my cake and eat it." In that moment he sounded like the Clark she remembered, the Clark she'd loved.

And it _was_ Clark she'd loved, through the last five years. Even when she'd loved Superman, and Richard, and Jason, it was always Clark too, despite the hurt and anger. _Her heart could muli-task, go figure._

"Lois," he said softly, taking her hand in his (and despite herself she didn't flinch) "Lois, I only ever needed two things in this world: sunlight and you. I go crazy when it comes to you, I make stupid decisions, and that's part of why I love you. I told myself it was Superman you wanted, and that I could make your heart-break less, because I could see how much I hurt you and I couldn't live with the knowledge that it was my hang-ups, my insecurities that were responsible. I couldn't tell myself it was about keeping you safe because I knew deep down that was a lie. So I did something shameful."

"And originally it _was_ about keeping me safe?" She asked faintly. She didn't want to think about shame. So much to process, so much to understand. And so much she hadn't expected to find within herself ten minutes ago.

"When Superman came to Metropolis, yes, it was about keeping my friends out of danger."

"But I got in under the radar anyway." He fell in love with her despite all these problems, all these assumptions about how it wouldn't work out. He'd loved her as she'd loved him, irresponsibly and irresistibly.

_They both made the other capable of flight, in very different ways. _

A beat.

"I should go," he said softly, his face twisted with grief. He'd taken her silence as proof of her anger. "I-" He looked straight at her, at a loss for words. "Thank you for saving me, Lois." She wasn't sure whether he'd meant from the sea or not. "And thank you for telling me about Jason. I- I hope you can find it in your heart to let me be part of his life."

"Of course you'll be part of his life," she said quietly. That had never occurred to her, in all the revelations of the last half hour. She heard Richard's voice in her head: _You're a compassionate woman Lois, and that's not a bad trait_. She knew she was compassionate, and she knew how she'd gotten that way: through suffering. Mathos Pathos, she remembered it well from her college days. She'd become a better person through her own suffering, and she'd gained self-knowledge through it too. And now he was here, telling her that he'd gone through the same process. That _he'd _finally gotten his head out of his ass. She knew how that felt. She knew how a lot of what had happened to him felt. She remembered suddenly, from long ago, a story she'd read as a little girl.

_"Who hath dared to wound thee?" cried the Giant, "Tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him."_

_"Nay," answered the child, "But these are the wounds of Love."_

And so were the ones she bore, and so were the ones he bore on his back. They weren't so very different, they weren't so very alone. It was love that made him do what he did, and she (hand on heart) could say the same thing. It wasn't a contest, it wasn't a war. It wasn't anger in sheep's clothing. It was the knowledge that everyone, _everyone_, has feet of clay and neither of them were immune to that. She'd just realised it sooner.

Her own words came back to her: _"I wanted a garden, bursting into life."_ And here she was, in her own garden, standing in front of someone she loved, despite everything. Maybe, in a weird way, because of it. Would she turn her back and let the garden lie asleep, waiting for a spring that might never come? Or would she take a chance, finally knowing and understanding that it was her right, and his, to screw up? And that it was also their obligation to keep trying. _That's _what she'd figured out when he left.

She was still shell-shocked, she knew. She was still angry, she knew that too. But she wasn't willing to let him go into the darkness. Because she believed in second chances: that was what had gotten her through his leaving. They had a child, and a past, and a complicated relationship: they had a lot of stuff you don't just throw away.

"Clark," she heard her voice say, maybe of its own volition.

He turned back to her, his eyes bright, and she knew that he would probably cry once he was out of her sight. They had that in common too.

"Clark, you are a stupid, frail, frightened man who has screwed up every relationship he's ever had, and who broke my heart not once but twice."

She could see the hurt her words caused, but he steeled himself, apparently willing to let her get it off her chest.

"You leave when things get rough and you believe dumb-ass things about yourself and you made me doubt myself and everything I've ever thought."

"I know." His voice was raspy, but still he didn't move.

"So here's what we're gonna do, okay Kansas? We're gonna take some time, and think about this, and I'm gonna punch a lot of bags in the local gym and then we're gonna try and make this work."

_"What?" _He was standing still as a statue.

"Still talking Kansas, okay?" she snapped, forcing herself to say this before the tears came. "We're gonna be honest and try to make this work. And maybe it will and maybe it won't but we'll see." He looked amazed, astonished, like she'd suddenly started speaking in Swahili, and she fought the urge to laugh a little.

"You mean, you mean…"

"I mean, no more secrets, and no more lies. No more thinking we know what's best for each other. No more making decisions without a free, frank and open exchange of ideas, expletives, and possibly gun-fire."

"No more safe."

"See, you're catching on."

Still he stared. "So we'll take things slowly," he said, eyes searching her face. Possibly unable to believe what she'd just said.

"Yeah, we'll take things slowly. And it might not work out, but we'll be able to say we tried." A beat. She felt tired suddenly. "We'll just see."

Still he was frozen, and then suddenly… In a movement too fast for the human eye to make out he was by her side. He kissed her, gasping her in like he'd gasped in air when he first broke the water's surface by her side at New Krypton.

He put her down sheepishly. "No more of that, I take it?"

Lois felt her own new, unused and tremulous smile. "We'll see."

So many different meanings, so many different words. But they could work those out for themselves. He was alive, and safe, and something had finally changed between them.

Lois looked around her, her garden bursting into life, and smiled.

_We'll see_, she thought.


	16. Chapter 16

_Disclaimer: _This fanficiton is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended. All quotes from Oscar Wilde fall within the public domain. The fairytale quote last chapter was from _The Selfish Giant_, if you're wondering...

**EPILOGUE**

_I know what you're thinking. No really, I do. You're thinking "Are you out of your mind? You two are like TNT and matches, water and gasoline." And you're right, you're absolutely right. Me and Clark make each other crazy, make each other dumb. But there's one change that came about in all this that you're not figuring in, boys and girls, and that's this: I love the mook, and he loves me. _

_It's taking time, and we still have our moments. Richard's fond of saying that emotional stupidity has no cure, it just occasionally goes into remission. We both have stuff to work through, and hang ups, and bad habits but we're making progress. It took him a long time to regain my trust; it took even longer for me to finally vent my anger (his apartment, three cans of spray paint, don't ask). We're clumsy around each other, we say and do stupid things. But when he was called to the hospital because Martha had had a stroke, it was me who went with him, who sat in the chair and squeezed his arm and laid my head upon his shoulder. When I staggered home after going a couple of rounds with a Mob enforcer who didn't like my poking around in his business premises, it was Clark who cooked me chicken soup and checked my bandages and read to me so that I could fall asleep. Jason loves him, and they do practice together: he plays catch with Richard, but he plays different games with Clark. _

_I know some things, like my waking up to an empty bed so much, and having to give him a rain-check on so many dates, still bother him. But at least now he believes me when I tell him it's okay. And now he accepts that it's my decision, my choice._

_So really we're making progress. _

_The truth is… The truth is, I am Lois Lane, Ace Reporter, and I have loved three men in my life: My son, the man who was father to my son for four years, and the father of my son. Try saying that five times fast. The truth is that nothing is perfect, that everything is process and that people screw up. The truth is that my life, for all its fractures and tears and holes and dropped stitches, is beautiful._

_The truth is take a risk, you try and you just wait and see._

_The truth is that you forgive and move on, because that's when you grow. That's when your life becomes a gardem, bursting with possibilities._

_And the truth, never forget, can set you free._

_A/N I just want to thank everyone who has read and reviewed, and i hope that you've enjoyed this little tale. As for the ending, blame Tandrelmairon and her God of Second Chances; i mean, c'mon... What's the point in doing AU if you can't have a little fun? Lois and Clark won't live happily ever after, but they'll give it their best shot. I feel like i can give them a little privacy now: the crazy kids have gotten some sense. So thanks again, and cheers!_

_Hobbits away, ho!_


End file.
